Wall St set to open lower
U.S. stock futures were slightly lower on Wednesday, a day after the Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied 560.54 points, or 1.60% as the traders shrugged off concerns around the omicron coronavirus variant.
As of 5:10 a.m. ET, Dow futures were marked 37 points, or 0.1% lower to 35,344. S&P 500 futures dropped 9.5 points, or 0.2% to 4,631.25 while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures gave away 57.75 points, or 0.36% to 15,922.25.
Stock traders have been keeping a close eye on any new details about omicron as they try to figure out how the variant will affect the economy.
On Tuesday, the S&P 500 gained 81.21 points, or 1.78% to end at 4,649.23 while the Nasdaq Composite surged 360.14 points, or 2.40% to finish at 15,341.09.
Musk claims he’s “sold enough” Tesla stock to meet his 10% goal
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk said in a podcast interview on Tuesday that he has “sold enough” stock to hit his target of selling 10% of his shares in the electric-vehicle company.
“I sold enough stock to get to around 10% plus the option exercise stuff and I tried to be extremely literal here,” Musk said in the interview with satire website Babylon Bee.
The tech mogul offloaded an additional 583,611 Tesla shares yesterday, taking the total number of shares he has sold to 13.5 million – roughly 80% of what he had intended to sell.
Asked whether he unloaded the shares because of the outcome of a poll he held on Twitter last month, Musk told the website that he needed to exercise stock options that are set to expire next year “no matter what.”
On Sunday, Musk tweeted that he would pay more than $11 billion in taxes this year.
As of writing, Tesla shares were up $26.48, or 2.82% to $965.01 apiece in the premarket trading session. The stock closed Tuesday’s regular session up $38.59, or 4.29% to $938.53 per share.
Crude futures jump on bullish API data; Eyes on EIA report
In energy markets, crude futures jumped higher early Wednesday after the American Petroleum Institute (API) released data on Tuesday that showed a surprise drop in U.S. crude-oil stockpiles of 3.67 million barrels versus the 815,000 figure for the week ended on December 17.
The API data also revealed that gasoline supplies increased by 3.7 million barrels while distillate supplies fell by 849,000 barrels.
Today, traders are awaiting the official oil inventory report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
The report is expected to show a decline of 3.9 million barrels, while gasoline supplies are forecast to have jumped 600,000 barrels and distillate stock are expected to jump 1.6 million barrels.
As of 5:10 a.m. ET, U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were up 47 cents, or 0.66% to $71.59 a barrel. Global Brent crude futures rose 41 cents, or 0.55% to $74.37 a barrel.