Early Look

Monday, November 25, 2024

U.S. stock futures are looking higher overnight to kick off the holiday abbreviated trading week, adding to last week’s stock market gains investors appear to welcome Donald Trump’s pick of Scott Bessent for Treasury Secretary as a measured choice that would inject more stability into the U.S. economy and financial markets. The WSJ reported that Bessent says delivering on trump tax plans is top priority. All three major benchmarks rebounded last week as the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose a sharp 1% Friday to close at a fresh record high and climbed 2% for the week, while the S&P 500 rose 1.7% on the week and the Nasdaq advanced 1.7%. The dollar posted its eighth straight week of gains, the currency’s longest run of the year, while Bitcoin nearly touched $100,000 and gold prices jumped over 5% as all sorts of asset classes surged. News flow is expected to be quiet ahead of the break on Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday, though there are several M&A stories to kick off the week (see below). Economic data is also slow until Wednesday before the flood gates open, including the personal-consumption-expenditures price index. In Asian markets, The Nikkei Index surged 496 points to 38,780, the Shanghai Index dipped -3 points to 3,263, and the Hang Seng Index fell -78 points to 19,150. In Europe, the German DAX is 53 points to 19,376, while the FTSE 100 is up 16 points to 8,278.

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 426.16 points, or 0.97%, to 44,296.51.
• The Nasdaq Composite gained 31.23 points, or 0.16%, to 19,003.65.
• The Russell 2000 Index surged 42.65 points, or 1.80% to 2,406.67.

• 1:00 PM ET US Treasury to sell $69B in 2-year notes

• Earnings After the Close: A BLBD CENT DDD ENTA FLNC LESL NJR PFLT PNNT SMTC WWD ZM

• The European Union and China are close to an agreement over EV import tariffs, the chair of the trade committee of the European Parliament told a German broadcaster. The EU last month decided to increase tariffs on Chinese-built electric vehicles to as much as 45.3% in its highest-profile trade investigation.

• EQT (EQT) said Blackstone (BX) would buy non-controlling equity interests in some of its pipelines for $3.5 billion in cash. Reuters notes the sale could help the nat gas producer reduce the debt pile it accumulated after the $14 billion purchase of pipeline operator Equitrans Midstream in July.
• Oneok (OKE) and EnLink Midstream (ENLC) announced that they have executed a definitive merger agreement where Oneok will acquire all the outstanding publicly held common units of EnLink for $4.3B in Oneok common stock. Under the agreement, each outstanding common unit of EnLink that Oneok does not already own will be converted into 0.1412 shares of Oneok common stock. The exchange ratio was derived by dividing $15.75 per unit.
• Reuters notes that president-elect Trump plans to lift pause on new LNG export permits and move swiftly to approve pending as the transition team prepares wide-ranging energy plan to roll out within days after taking office. Trump plans to move quickly to offer more offshore leases for bidding and to expedite oil, gas permits to drill on federal lands, hold more sales.

• M&T Bank (MTB) was downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Citigroup (tgt to $230 from $220) noting M&T has been one the best year-to-date performers as its core results have been strong and the bank has shown consistent improvement in credit. The firm upgraded U.S. Bancorp (USB) to Buy from Neutral (tgt to $65 from $49) noting the bank has recently lagged the group as investors expressed concerns and believes the bank has turned the corner on investment spend and will return to delivering positive operating leverage.
• UniCredit (UNCRY) reinvigorated a stalled wave of European banking consolidation, bidding more than $10 billion for smaller Italian peer Banco BPM – WSJ reports. The all-stock offer comes as UniCredit is trying to acquire a big chunk of Germany’s Commerzbank, seeking to position itself as the dominant banking group.

• Merck (MRK) announces Pivotal Phase 3 ZENITH Trial Evaluating WINREVAIR(TM) (sotatercept-csrk) Met Primary Endpoint at Interim Analysis. WINREVAIR met primary endpoint of time to first morbidity or mortality event for the treatment of patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) functional class III or IV at high risk of mortality. Study to be stopped early and participants will be offered the opportunity to receive WINREVAIR.

• Hollywood’s two holiday big movies, Comcast’s (CMCSA) Wicked and Paramount’s (PARA) Gladiator II, brought in nearly $170 million in domestic box office sales for their opening weekends, according to estimates from comScore. Wicked posted domestic sales of $114 million, while Paramount’s Gladiator II sold $55.5 million.
• Amazon Web Services launched Quantum Embark, an advisory program that aims to prepare customers for society’s shift towards quantum computing. Note shares of companies that operate in the quantum computing field such as QUBT were trading higher following AWS’s announcement.
• Meta (META) Threads is losing ground to Bluesky in capitalizing the mass departure of users from Elon Musk’s X following Donald Trump’s election, The Financial Times reports.
• Samsung Electronics Co. (SSNLF) owes Netlist (NLST) $118 million for creating and selling infringing DRAM memory products to customers, including Google LLC, a Texas jury found Friday.
• Snowflake (SNOW) upgraded to Outperform from Neutral at Wedbush with a $190 price target.