5 things to know before the stock market opens on Thursday 22 April

Here are the key news, trends and analyzes that investors need to start their trading day:

U.S. stock futures fell slightly Thursday after Wall Street bounced back from a two-session losing streak. The Dow Jones industrial average averaged 316 points, or 0.9%, on Wednesday. The S&P 500 also climbed 0.9% and the Nasdaq 1.2%. The Dow and S&P 500 were slightly embarrassed by their Friday highs. The Nasdaq was down 1% from its record in February. Ten-year treasury yields, which rose to 14-month highs in March and lowered tech stocks, pulled lower early Thursday and remained below 1.6%.

The Labor Department will report its weekly investigation into jobless claims at 08:30 ET, an hour before the opening clock. Economists expect 603,000 new applications for unemployment benefits last week. The initial claims of 576,000 from the previous week were easily the best number since the start of the Covid pandemic. This was the first reading among 600,000 since the 256,000 reported for the week ending March 14, 2020.

Southwest Airlines said on Thursday that bookings for leisure travel would continue to rise and that it would have a better cash flow by June. The Dallas-based airline had a net revenue of $ 116 million in the first quarter compared to a loss of $ 94 million a year earlier. The profit in the first quarter was the result of federal aid of more than $ 1 billion, which reimbursed its labor costs. Revenue of $ 2.1 billion decreased by almost 52% compared to the previous year. Shares rose 1.5% in the forex market.

American Airlines posted a net loss of $ 1.25 billion, its fifth consecutive quarterly loss. The carrier, like its big rivals Delta and United, was forced to do without much of the business travel and international travel revenue they had long relied on. U.S. revenue was just over $ 4 billion, nearly 53% lower than the more than $ 8.5 billion it offered a year ago. Shares jumped 2.3%.

Credit Suisse reported a net loss of $ 275 million in the first quarter on Thursday after warning earlier this month of heavy losses in the collapse of US hedge fund Archegos Capital. Shares of the Swiss bank trading on Wall Street fell by about 7% in the forex market. However, the quarterly loss was narrower than expected. Credit Suisse CEO Thomas Gottstein said if it were not for Archegos, Q1 would have been ‘one of our bank’s best quarters in history’. “Definitely the best quarter in the last ten years,” he told CNBC, calling the Archegos losses unacceptable.

President Joe Biden promises to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, the White House announced before hosting a global climate summit on Thursday and Friday. The target roughly doubles America’s previous commitment under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. All 40 world leaders who invited Biden to the virtual event will attend, including those from China and India. The summit is a chance for the US to rejoin the global climate efforts after the Trump administration left the Paris agreement.

India on Thursday reported a record number of daily cases of Covid as the country’s second wave of coronavirus shows no signs of slowing down. There were 314,835 new cases over a 24-hour period. It surpasses the world’s previous highest one-day increase held by the United States in January. There is also growing concern about the double mutation of a Covid variant discovered in India, which could make the virus more contagious. India is the second in the United States with the most cumulative infections – almost 16 million, about half of the US total and about 2 million more than number 3 Brazil. However, in contrast to India and Brazil, which are in the midst of increases, the new daily cases in the US have tended to be lower.

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