5 things to know before the stock market opens Thursday, December 23rd

Here are the top stories investors need to start their trading day:

Maybe Santa will move into the stock market, after all. There are still two trading days until Christmas, and Wednesday showed that stocks are still seeing gains, even during this slow month. Major indices rose, with the Dow jumping more than 500 points, the S&P up 1.49% and the Nasdaq recording a gain of 1.54%. However, stocks are still on track to finish December in the red, likely ending up with their worst annual performance in 14 years. On Thursday, investors will chew on the latest jobless claims data. Read live markets updates here.

semiconductor manufacturer micronwhich had shrunk due to declining demand for personal computers, said it would reduce its workforce by about 10%, with bonuses also suspended. That works out to a few thousand employees, as a recent filing showed the company has around 48,000 employees. Micron announced the decision after it published its most recent quarterly results and forward guidance, both of which fell short of Wall Street’s expectations. “In the past few months, we have seen a significant drop in demand,” CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in prepared remarks.

If you’ve been following the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the prosecution of its founder and mastermind, Sam Bankman-Fried, you’re probably wondering why we haven’t heard from Gary Wang and Caroline Ellison. And if you doubt it Cooperate with the feds, You’re right. On Wednesday night, federal prosecutors revealed that Wang, the co-founder of FTX, and Ellison, who was the co-CEO of sister company Alameda Research, had agreed to plead guilty to federal crimes while working with authorities in the fallen cryptocurrency case. Establishment. The news broke while Bankman-Fried, aka SBF, was on a flight from the Bahamas to the United States to face his trial.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stormed into Washington on Wednesday in what he was greeted as A triumphant visit. It was his first known trip outside Ukraine’s borders since Russia launched its unprovoked invasion of the ex-Soviet country in February. Zelensky’s trip to the US capital included a meeting and press conference with President Joe Biden at the White House and a rousing 32-minute speech to a joint session of Congress. “Thank you for the two financial packages that you have already given us, and for the two packages that you may be willing to decide on,” he told lawmakers who are set to approve more than $44 billion in new aid to Ukraine. “Your money is not charity. It is an investment in global security and democracy, which we deal with in the most responsible way.”

Another day, another grim scrap of data from the housing market. Home sales fell by a deeper-than-expected 7.7% in November from October, indicating The tenth consecutive month of declining sales. The sales reflect contracts signed in September and October, when interest rates peaked before dropping slightly in recent weeks. (Although it’s still about double what it was at the beginning of this year.) “Basically, the residential real estate market froze in November, similar to the sales activity seen during the Covid-19 economic shutdowns in 2020,” Lawrence said. Yoon, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors.

— Samantha Sobin, Keef Leswing, Mackenzie Sigalos, Rohan Goswami, Christina Wilkie, Chelsey Cox and Diana Olick contributed to this report.

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