Tesla, Sarepta, Boeing: What to Watch When the Stock Market Opens Today

By James Willhite 

Here's what we're watching ahead of the opening bell on Friday.

-- U.S. stock futures ticked higher, with contracts tied to the S&P 500 up 0.3% a day after the broad-market index notched its first all-time closing high of 2021. Nasdaq-100 futures added 0.5%, suggesting tech shares would also build on Thursday's recovery. Investors have largely focused on prospects for additional government spending once Democrats achieve a unified government after President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in.

What's Coming Up

The U.S. jobs report for December is due at 8:30 a.m. ET. Job growth has slowed in recent months as cold weather, rising Covid-19 infections and lockdowns took the wind out of a nascent recovery -- and those factors are expected to have weighed heavily last month.

A slew of blank-check companies are joining the market Friday, including Epiphany Technology Acquisition and SoftBank's SVF Investment.

Market Movers to Watch

-- Shares of Sarepta Therapeutics dropped more than 48% in off-hours trading after mixed results from a study of a drug targeting a form of muscular dystrophy.

-- Tesla's shares are up 4.6% premarket, after yesterday's almost 8% jump made Elon Musk the richest man in the world, pushing him ahead of Amazon's Jeff Bezos.

-- U.S.-listed shares of another electric-car maker, China's Nio, bounced 5% higher premarket.

-- Micron Technology's shares jumped 3.8% premarket. KeyBanc raised its price target to $121 from $82 a share. They closed yesterday at $79.11.

-- Software company Duck Creek Technologies reported a bigger quarterly loss than a year ago while its net sales climbed by more than a quarter. Its shares inched down 0.2% premarket.

-- Boeing shares slipped 0.4% ahead of the bell. The plane maker will pay $2.5 billion to resolve a criminal probe as it admitted that employees deceived aviation regulators about safety issues leading to two deadly crashes of the 737 MAX.

Market Fact

U.S. government-bond yields rose faster than many expected after Democrats won control of the Senate. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note closed at 1.07% Thursday, according to data from Tradeweb.

Chart of the Day

Bitcoin continued its blistering start to 2021, crossing $40,000 for the first time on Thursday.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 08, 2021 08:12 ET (13:12 GMT)

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