The Market In 5 Minutes

IN THE NEWS

Benzinga

President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed legislation passed overwhelmingly by Congress that slaps Russia with new sanctions and restricts the scandal-plagued president’s ability to weaken them: Link

Forks have been in the news a lot recently due to controversy in the bitcoin community. There was the potential fork that threatened to split bitcoin into two cryptocurrencies after a lengthy “civil war” between miners and developers. That came and went with little issue: Link

Tesla Inc TSLA delivered a big second-quarter earnings beat after Wednesday's close, the last report before the highly-anticipated Model 3 will hit the market: Link

The only thing riskier than Wall Street is betting big on Hollywood blockbusters: Link

Wall Street Journal

President Donald Trump on Wednesday embraced a Senate proposal to cut the number of green cards issued annually by half, as part of his drive to reduce legal as well as illegal immigration into the U.S.: Link

The U.S. case against two former JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM traders charged with concealing billions of dollars in losses fell apart because a key witness known as the London Whale shifted blame to Chief Executive Officer James Dimon and other top executives, according to a person familiar with the matter: Link

Reuters

New U.S. sanctions will make it harder for Russia to build two gas export pipelines to Europe but the projects are unlikely to be stopped: Link

Amazon.com Inc AMZN is quickly ramping up the billions of dollars a year it spends on creating and licensing TV shows and films, signaling the retailer plans to be in show business for the long haul: Link

Bloomberg

The U.S. labor market -- marked this year by solid job gains, modest wage growth and falling unemployment -- probably delivered more of the same in July: Link

The Bank of England will probably downgrade its forecast for 2017 growth on Thursday as it also announces that interest rates will stay at a record-low 0.25 percent for now: Link

New York Post

The New York insurance company that wrote policies for 800,000 questionable Wells Fargo WFC auto loans has been dragged into the bank’s latest scandal: Link

ECONOMIC DATA

• USA Challenger Job Cuts (YoY) for Jul -9.00% vs -19.30% Prior
• USA Initial Jobless Claims for Jul 28 240.0K vs 242.00 Est; Prior 244.0K. Continuing Claims for Jul 21 1.97M vs 1.96K Est
• The services PMI for July is schedule for release at 9:45 a.m. ET.
• Data on factory orders for June will be released at 10:00 a.m. ET.
• The ISM non-manufacturing index for July will be released at 10:00 a.m. ET.
• The Energy Information Administration’s weekly report on natural gas stocks is schedule for release at 10:30 a.m. ET.
• Data on money supply for the recent week will be released at 4:30 p.m. ET.

ANALYST RATINGS

• JP Morgan upgraded Qualys QLYS from Neutral to Overweight
• Atlantic Equities upgraded Caterpillar CAT from Sell to Neutral'
• KBW Upgrades Pacfic Mercantile PMBC from Market Perform to Outperform
• Morgan Stanley downgraded ADP ADP from Equal-Weight to Underweight
• Jefferies downgraded Time Warner TWX from Buy to Hold
• Benchmark downgraded AMC Entertainment AMC from Buy to Hold

This is a tool used by the Benzinga News Desk each trading day — it's a look at everything happening in the market, in five minutes. To get the full version of this note every morning, click here or email minutes@benzinga.com.