Yahoo Finance What to know in markets Thursday
Trading will resume on Thursday after all major markets closed Wednesday for the National Day of Mourning to honor the late President George H.W. Bush.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) will meet in Vienna on Thursday. Because of oil’s recent weakness, the meeting between OPEC and its main partner Russia will be closely watched.
“The next OPEC meeting will likely be closely monitored by markets given recent oil price movements (Brent and WTI decreased 30% since early October). While it is was earlier believed that Saudi Arabia would agree to cut production, recent statements suggest that may not be the case unless other oil producers also cut output,” Barclays wrote in a note.
Big tech goes to Washington
Big tech is heading to the White House on Thursday. Leaders from the most influential tech companies such as Google (GOOGL) CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella, IBM (IBM) CEO Ginni Rometty, Oracle (ORCL) CEO Safra Katz and Qualcomm (QCOM) CEO Steve Mollenkopf are expected to meet with top White House officials to discuss emerging technologies such as AI and 5G.
Earnings and economic data
Thursday will be the busiest day of the week for corporate earnings. Grocery giant Kroger (KR) is set to report earnings before the market open, and analysts polled by Bloomberg are expecting earnings of 43 cents per share on $27.7 billion in revenue. Chipmaker Broadcom (AVGO), Athleisure brand Lululemon (LULU) and cosmetics retailer Ulta (ULTA) are all reporting after the bell. Broadcom is expected to report earnings of $5.56 per share on $5.40 billion in revenue. After rescheduling its earnings report, analysts expect Lululemon to earn 70 cents per share on $737.43 million in revenue. Finally, Ulta is expected to earn $2.16 per share on $1.56 billion of revenue.
On the economic data front, economists are expecting seasonally adjusted jobless claims for the week ending December 1 to have decreased to 225,000 from 234,000 in the prior week.
Heidi Chung is a reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter: @heidi_chung.
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