With markets making some small gains on Tuesday, stocks look set to have a quiet start this morning as Omicron uncertainty continues to cloud the pre-Christmas period.
US futures were largely a tad lower as investors awaited market open on Wednesday morning. However, North American indices may follow their European counterparts, which began the day a little higher. Even so, trading remains muted as investors remain uncertain about the Omicron variant.
Oil prices also remained steady, with analysts on the lookout for anything that could indicate whether Omicron will impact demand in the coming weeks and months.
Important financial metrics being released in the coming days include the Conference Board’s latest consumer confidence index on Wednesday and inflation data coming on Thursday.
| NASDAQ | S&P500 | Bitcoin |
|---|---|---|
| 15,341.09 (+2.40%) | 4,649.23 (+1.78%) | 49,125.54 (+0.91%) |
Here are some of today’s trending stocks:
Blackberry (NYSE: BB) has reported better than expected results, swinging to a net profit despite revenue falling short of some analysts’ expectations.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO, Elon Musk, was once again hitting the headlines as he claimed to have fulfilled a promise to his Twitter followers to sell 10% of his company stock. He also railed against the state of California for “overtaxation”.
The US Food and Drug Administration is expected to authorise the use of at-home COVID-19 treatments from Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) and Merck (NYSE: MRK).
Travel stocks like Delta Airlines (NYSE: DAL) and Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) enjoyed a brief recovery on Tuesday amid reports that US President Joe Biden is considering back-pedalling on Omicron-related travel restrictions.
British takeaway delivery service Just Eat (LON: JET) has strengthened its expansion into groceries after signing a deal with convenience store chain One Stop.
The company is also benefitting from the news that its rival Delivery Hero (ETR: DHER) is stepping down some of its operations in Germany.
These are a few of the big stories coming out of Asia:
Another Chinese property developer appears to be in a spot of bother, following in the footsteps of Kaisa (HK: 1638) and Evergrande (HK: 3333). Sinic Holdings (HK: 2103) has warned that it may default on its debts.
Chinese tech stocks such as Alibaba (HK: 9988), Baidu (HK: 9888) and Bilibili (NASDAQ: BILI) have climbed after optimistic valuations and indications of favourable monetary policy from China’s central bank.
Today’s trending crypto news looks like this:
El Salvadorean President Nayib Bukele boasted on Twitter that the Central American nation has purchased another $1m worth of Bitcoin (BTC).
Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey has claimed that Bitcoin will replace the US Dollar.
Terra (LUNA), Ripple (XRP) and Loopring (LRC) were all trading sharply higher, with their prices rising by at least 8% over the last 24 hours.
Roughly $150,000-worth of Solana (SOL) has been stolen from would-be NFT buyers. Hackers pretended to be releasing early NFTs by Fractal, a new venture from Twitch co-founder Justin Kan.