5 things to know before the stock market opens on Friday, December 16

Here are the most important information investors need to start their trading day:

Ho-ho-ho? Rather, no no no. It’s been a terrible week for stocks and hopes of a Santa Claus rally are fading. US stocks are on the verge of their second straight week of losses. Markets fell sharply on Thursday as investors digested Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s hawkish remarks and outlook from the previous day. Sluggish retail sales heading into the holiday season didn’t help either, although they pointed to a slowing economy, which the Fed wants as it tries to bring inflation down. Instead, it’s shaping up to be an environment where the Fed keeps rates higher for a longer period, regardless of what happens in the coming months. Read live market updates here.

Twitter suspended the accounts of several journalists and commentators who report on the company and its owner, the billionaire You’re here CEO Elon Musk. As of Thursday night, the social media platform had suspended Ryan Mac’s accounts from The New York Times, CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, Washington Post’s Drew Harwell, Mashable’s Matt Binder, The Intercept’s Micah Lee, Voice of America’s Steve Herman, plus independent personalities Aaron Rupar, Keith Olbermann and Tony Webster. Musk, who has called himself a ‘free speech absolutist’, suggested on Twitter that the journalists’ suspensions were in the same vein of disciplining accounts that track robberies, including one that tracks aisles. and from the CEO’s private jet.

The Biden administration on Thursday unveiled restrictions on several, mostly Chinese, entities, including a chipmaker, on national security grounds. The chip company, Yangtze Memory Technologies Corporation, or YMTC, was already on a US trade blacklist. The action is aimed at hampering China’s ability to use “artificial intelligence, advanced computing and other powerful commercially available technologies for military modernization and human rights violations”, according to a Head of Commerce Department. The move also comes as the administration tries to bolster semiconductor manufacturing on US soil.

Adobe released quarterly results on Thursday that beat analysts’ expectations, while the design software maker stuck to its full-year guidance. The stock rose on the positive news, although it was down more than 40% on the year, much larger than the decline in the broad S&P 500 index. operating records with a focus on profitability,” Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said in a conference call. Still, he also warned that a slowing economy could hurt the company and that Adobe would proceed with caution.

A not-so-surprising victim of the rapidly cooling housing market is the homecoming segment. Earnings from flips, defined as when a home is bought and sold within a 12-month window, fell 18.4% in the third quarter from the second. This is the largest quarterly decline in more than a decade, according to real estate data provider ATTOM. It’s a double whammy for real estate swimmers: house prices are still high, but they’re falling fast, while renovation costs have also skyrocketed. “With buyer demand weakening, prices trending lower in recent months, and financing rates significantly higher than they were at the start of the year, fins are facing a much more challenging environment today, and likely in 2023 as well,” Rick Sharga, executive vice president of market intelligence at ATTOM, said in a statement.

– CNBC’s Alex Harring, Kevin Breuninger, Jordan Novet and Diana Olick contributed to this report.

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