Stock market today: Live updates

Oil prices are on pace to book the first monthly gain since September as the U.S. and Iran stand on the brink of a more direct confrontation in the Middle East.

U.S. crude and global benchmark Brent are up 5.95% and 6.09% respectively for the month, though they were trading lower Wednesday on weak economic data out of China.

The West Texas Intermediate contract for March was last down $1.77, or 2.27%, to trade at $76.05 a barrel. The Brent contract for March was trading at $81.77 a barrel, down $1.10 or 1.33%.

China factory activity contracted for the fourth consecutive month raising demand concerns, while U.S. crude inventories rose by 1.2 million barrels last week.

Tensions in the Middle East are simmering with the U.S. preparing retaliatory strikes in response to the death of three U.S. soldiers in a drone attack by Iran-allied militants.

President Joe Biden says he holds Iran responsible for providing weapons to the militants. Iran has warned that it would take “decisive action” in response to U.S. strikes.

“The spreading conflict in the Middle East remains the most visible and growing risk for energy markets,” Natasha Kaneva, head of global commodities research at JPMorgan, told clients in a research note Tuesday.

— Spencer Kimball

Check out some of the companies making headlines in midday trading.

Boeing — The aircraft maker jumped more than 5% after its losses from the end of last year came in lower than expected. Boeing reported an adjusted loss per share of 47 cents on revenue of $22.02 billion. Analysts had expected losses of 78 cents per share on $21.1 billion in revenue, according to LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv. Its CEO said now is “not the time” for financial targets as the company deals with fallout from its fuselage panel blowout incident earlier this month. 

Alphabet — Shares fell 6.3% after the company posted disappointing fourth-quarter advertising revenue. Late Tuesday, Alphabet posted beats on both top and bottom lines, but its advertising revenue of $65.52 billion fell below analysts’ forecast of $65.94 billion, per StreetAccount.

Paramount Global — Shares of the media company popped about 7.5% on news that billionaire entrepreneur Byron Allen submitted a takeover offer to buy all outstanding shares. The deal values Paramount at about $30 billion, including debt and equity.

Read the full list here.

— Brian Evans

Eli Lilly shares hit a fresh high in trading Wednesday, in the wake of strong results from Novo Nordisk. The two companies are leaders in the emerging obesity drug space, with Eli Lilly recently launching Zepbound, a GLP-1/GIP drug also known as tirzepatide, into the market. Novo Nordisk said it sees its 2024 sales growing 18% to 26% from 2023 as supplies of its popular drugs Wegovy and Ozempic increase.

“Readthrough to LLY is limited as higher share split for Wegovy may not come at their cost given tirzepatide’s LT supply remains constrained,” wrote Mohit Bansal, an analyst at UBS. “Higher market growth under NVO guide could be taken positively for AMGN, however, as a potential third player with AMG133.”

Amgen recently shared early data from its phase 1 study of MariTide, or AMG133, its experimental obesity drug. Like Lilly, Amgen’s stock also hit a 52-week high in trading earlier, but shares were recently trading virtually flat from Tuesday.

Novo Nordisk’s stock was holding on to gains and was recently up 3.8%. The company also shared positive updates about its pipeline, which includes a next-generation weight loss drug.

—Christina Cheddar Berk

Tech stocks propelled 2023’s spectacular end-of-year rally, but the bubble may finally be on the verge of deflating.

Information technology and communication services are the only two S&P 500 sectors down for the week, having respectively slid 1.6% and 2.9%.

“Magnificent 7” members Alphabet and Apple have respectively lost nearly 7% and 3.8% this week. Other tech titans poised to end the week in the red include Applied Materials (-3.1%), Taiwan Semiconductor (-3.4%), Cisco (-2.9%) and Intel (-2.9%).

— Lisa Kailai Han

The Dow is on pace to finish January with gains of more than 2%, as a group of rallying stocks outweighed a handful of sharp sell-offs.

More specifically, the blue-chip index is tracking to end the month, which concludes with Wednesday’s closing bell, 2.2% higher. About two-thirds of the 30 stocks that comprise the average are tracking for gains.

IBM has led the index higher this month, climbing nearly 14%. The technology stock took a leg up on the back of a better-than-expected earnings report last week.

Verizon and Travelers were the next biggest gainers with advances of more than 12% each. Merck followed, rising more than 11%.

But those gains were mitigated by big losses seen elsewhere. Most notably, Boeing has dropped more than 18% in the month amid the 737 Max 9 crisis, making it the worst performer in the index.

Intel was the next biggest loser with a 15% tumble. 3M and Walgreens also weighed on the index, posting slides of more than 12% each.

— Alex Harring

New York Community Bancorp plunged as much as 46%, down $4.80 to a low of $5.58 in early trading Wednesday, the largest one-day decline since it went public in 1993 and helping drive down the SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF as much as 5.6%.

In more recent trading, the KRE was off 3.8%, on course for its worst one-day loss since falling 5.5% last May 4.

NYCB, viewed as a beneficiary of last spring’s banking crisis when it took over the failed Signature Bank, said premarket Wednesday that it suffered an adjusted fourth quarter loss of $193 million, took a $552 million provision for credit losses and slashed the quarterly dividend to 5c a share from 17c previously.

Other notable declines among regional banks included Valley National, down 11.3%, Bank OZK, lower by 5.3% and BankUnited, off 5.2%.

— Scott Schnipper, Gina Francolla

The Treasury Department will be increasing the size of its debt auctions in the coming quarter, though the total amount it seeks to raise is less than previously announced.

Officials with the department on Wednesday listed the upcoming auction increases as follows: 2- and 5-year by $3 billion per month, the 3-year by $2 billion per month, and the 7-year by $1 billion per month. Cumulatively, that means the auction sizes of the 2-, 3-, 5-, and 7-year respectively will rise by $9 billion, $6 billion, $9 billion and $3 billion by the end of April.

For the quarter, Treasury will be borrowing $760 billion, which is below the $815 billion initially announced in October. That comes despite the government running a deficit of more than $500 billion in the fiscal first quarter of 2024. The upcoming auctions in mid-February will total $121 billion.

Treasury officials also said they do not foresee any further increases in auction sizes.

—Jeff Cox

The Nasdaq Composite opened lower on Wednesday, weighed down by a slide in Alphabet and Microsoft stock.

The tech-heavy composite fell 1.1%, while the S&P 500 pulled back 0.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 64 points, or 0.1%.

— Brian Evans

Costs for wages and salaries increased less than expected in the fourth quarter of 2023, the Labor Department reported Wednesday.

The employment cost index rose 0.9% for the October-through-December period, down from 1.1% in Q3 and the smallest increase since the second quarter of 2021. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for growth of 1%.

On a 12-month basis, the index rose 4.2%, down from 5.1% at the end of 2022. The Federal Reserve watches the ECI for clues on inflation.

—Jeff Cox

Boeing climbed 2% before the bell after the plane maker reported earnings amid the looming 737 Max 9 crisis.

The company posted a smaller loss per share than analysts polled by LSEG anticipated for the fourth quarter, while revenue came in better than forecasted. But management didn’t offer a 2024 outlook for investors as the company contended without the fallout of a fuselage panel blowing out midflight on a 737 Max 9 earlier this year.

Shares have tumbled more than 23% in January, making it the worst performer of the 30 stocks in the Dow.

— Leslie Josephs, Alex Harring

Check out the companies making headlines before the bell:

• Paramount Global — The media company’s stock surged more than 13% in premarket trading on news that billionaire entrepreneur Byron Allen submitted a $14.3 billion takeover offer. The deal values Paramount at about $30 billion, including debt and equity.
• Advanced Micro Devices — The semiconductor company’s shares slid 4.3% after posting fourth-quarter earnings Tuesday that came out in line with consensus expectations. AMD beat quarterly revenue estimates, but also gave a softer-than-expected first-quarter forecast.
• Mondelez International — Shares of the snack maker dropped 4.4% after the company reported a slowdown in growth for the fourth quarter and said it expects muted growth in comparable sales for 2024. Mondelez did post a beat on fourth-quarter adjusted earnings per share and in-line revenue, however.

For the full list, read here.

— Pia Singh

Private payroll growth decelerated in January, potentially signaling that the U.S. labor market is losing steam.

ADP data Wednesday showed private payrolls added 107,000 employees in January, while economists polled by Dow Jones forecast 150,000. The slowdown in the first month of 2024 was also below the downwardly revised 158,000 in December.

— Brian Evans

The high-flying Nasdaq is poised to open lower on Wednesday, and the recent run up for some of its biggest stocks could be partially the culprit for a bad one-day move. Wolfe Research strategist Chris Senyek said in a note to clients that the post-earnings moves for some major tech stocks may be in part a reaction to their recent success.

“Yesterday, several high-profile companies saw negative price action after missing expectations and/or providing disappointing guidance. Our sense is that the AMD & GOOGL selloffs after the market can be at least be partially attributed to investors ‘selling the news’ into high expectations after strong stock runs,” the note said.

That doesn’t mean that investors should completely ignore what has been an underwhelming run of earnings.

“However, some other economically-sensitive names that hadn’t recently meaningfully outperformed also sold off, including UPS & MDLZ. While one day certainly doesn’t make a trend, we viewed yesterday’s price action as a warning sign that the economy may be slowing faster than consensus expects,” the note said.

— Jesse Pound

Novo Nordisk on Wednesday reported sharply higher sales and forecast growth for 2024 between 18% and 25% as its drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, used to treat diabetes and for weight loss, experience increased demand.

The Danish pharmaceutical company’s net sales rose 31% year-on-year in 2023, to 232.26 billion Danish krone ($33.7 billion). Operating profit rose 37%, while fourth-quarter profit was above expectations.

Novo Nordisk has soared in value over the last year, at times becoming Europe’s most valuable firm by market capitalization.

The 2023 results were fueled by strong performance in the company’s diabetes and obesity care division, with obesity care in particular spiking by 154% at CER to 41.6 billion.

Read more here.

— Jenni Reid

China’s factory activity contracted for a fourth consecutive month in January, though the official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index expectedly rebounded to 49.2 from 49 in December, a six-month low. January’s reading is in line with the median forecast in a Reuters poll.

The official non-manufacturing managers’ index rose to 50.7 in January from 50.4 in December, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics released Wednesday. Strength in the country’s services industry helped offset weakness in the construction sector amid a slump in the real estate sector.

A PMI reading above 50 indicates expansion in activity, while a reading below that level points to a contraction.

For more, please read the full story.

— Clement Tan

Shares of Samsung Electronics fell 1.21% after the company posted a 34.57% drop in operating profit in the fourth quarter from a year ago, in line with its guidance issued earlier this month.

Here are Samsung’s fourth-quarter results versus estimates:

• Revenue: 67.78 trillion Korean won (about $51 billion), vs. 69.27 trillion Korean won expected by LSEG analysts
• Operating profit: 2.82 trillion Korean won, vs. 3.43 trillion Korean won expected by LSEG analysts

In its earnings guidance earlier this month, Samsung said it expected operating profit for the October-December quarter to be 2.8 trillion South Korean won ($2.13 billion), down 35% from the same period a year ago when the firm reported an operating profit of 4.31 trillion won.

Read the full story here.

— Sheila Chiang

Australia’s consumer price index in the fourth quarter rose 4.1% year-on-year, slower than the 5.4% recorded in the third quarter and also lower than the 4.3% expected by economists polled by Reuters.

This also marks the fourth straight quarter where the inflation rate fell, and marks the lowest level since December 2021.

The trimmed inflation rate, which excludes the most volatile 30% of items, came in at 4.2%, falling from 5.2% in the third quarter.

— Lim Hui Jie 

South Korea’s industrial output cooled in December and retail sales fell, according to official data.

December manufacturing production index increased 0.6%, less than the prior month’s 3.3% increase. The reading was still higher than a Reuters poll forecast of a 0.5% increase.

On the consumption side, retail sales in December fell 0.8% from the prior month and was up 2.2% from a year ago. That follows a 1% increase in November.

South Korea’s Kospi opened 0.08% lower.

— Shreyashi Sanyal