The Market In 5 Minutes: Tesla's Announcement, Major Earnings And Jobless Claims

Macro Focus

Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 29 points to 18,158.00, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index futures gained 2.50 points to 2,140.50. Futures for the Nasdaq 100 index gained 5.75 points to 4,836.75.

Oil prices traded lower as Brent crude futures declined 0.97 percent to trade at $52.16 per barrel, while US WTI crude futures also fell 0.98 percent to trade at $51.31 a barrel.

Initial Jobless Claims for Oct 14 260.0K vs 250.0K consensus estimate. Continuing Claims for Oct 7 2.06M vs 2.05M consensus estimate.

• New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley will speak in New York at 9:00 a.m. ET.
• Data on existing home sales for September will be released at 10:00 a.m. ET.
• The index of leading economic indicators for September is schedule for release 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.
• New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley is set to speak in New York at 4:45 p.m. ET.

BZ News Desk Focus

• Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Reports Q3 EPS $1.01 vs. Est. $0.99, Rev. $30.9B vs. Est. $31.09B
• American Air (NYSE: AAL) Reports Q3 Adj. EPS $2.80, GAAP EPS $1.40 vs $1.57 Est., Sales $10.594B vs $10.56B Est.
• eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) Reports Q3 Adj. EPS $0.45 vs $0.44 Est., Sales $2.22B vs $2.19B Est.
• American Express (NYSE: AXP) Reports Q3 EPS $1.20 vs $0.96 Est., Sales Excluding Interest Expense $7.8B vs $7.72B Est
• Mattel (NASDAQ: MAT) Reports Q3 Adj EPS $0.70 vs $0.71 Est, Sales $1.795B vs $1.77B Est.
• Walgreens Boots Alliance (NASDAQ: WBA) Reports Q4 Adj. EPS $1.07 vs $0.99 Est., Sales $28.6B vs $29.1B Est.
• PulteGroup (NYSE: PHM) Q3 EPS $0.37 vs $0.44 Est., Revenue $1.94B vs $1.95B Est.

Sell-Side Themes

Kinder Morgan (NYSE: KMI) received a pair of upgrades from Credit Suisse (Outperform) and Stifel (Buy).

Sell-Side's Most Noteworthy Calls

• Pacific Crest downgraded AMC Networks (NASDAQ: AMCX) to Sector Weight.
• Societe Generale downgraded Anheuser-Busch (NYSE: BUD) to Hold.
• Guggenheim upgraded Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) to Buy.
• Pacific Crest upgraded Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE) to Overweight.
• BTIG started Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX) at Neutral.

Deal Talk

Tableau Software (NYSE: DATA) considered a potential sale recently, according to sources as reported by Dow Jones on Wednesday. The talks, which took place as late as this summer, stalled out. Tableau appeared on a list of companies that were considered to be potential takeover targets of Salesforce (NYSE: CRM). The list was found in an email from former Secretary of State and board member Colin Powell and appeared on the DCLeaks website.

Shares of Michael Kors (NASDAQ: KORS) rose to a high of $50.33 Wednesday, following a report from Intereconomica.com that the men's and women's apparel company has received an offer of around $55.50 per share, or $10 billion, according to sources. The report said the offer was substantially lower than the price targets of some analysts.

In The News

Police alarmed by the emergence of militants that they say are using chat apps and social media to recruit militants in Europe from abroad.

Newspapers are suffering an accelerating drop in print advertising, a market that already was under stress, forcing some publishers to consider significant cost cuts and dramatic changes to their print and digital products. Global spending on newspaper print ads is expected to decline 8.7 percent to $52.6 billion in 2016, according to estimates from GroupM. That would be the biggest drop since the recession.

Blogosphere

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) announced Wednesday evening that all vehicles produced in its factory – including Model 3 – "will have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver." Model S and Model X vehicles with this new hardware are already in production.

"The new cars will probably be able to operate in some sort of self-driving mode at some future date, but won't be doing it at once. That's a welcome retreat. As Gadfly has argued before, driverless cars are going to end up killing a lot more people before they start getting safer, and Tesla needs to recognize that for both its own sake, and that of the broader industry."

Trending

TSLA VZ EBAY AAL WBA KMI ONVO AXP PBYI TXT

In an election that has already pushed all boundaries of political norms, Donald Trump threatened to break them in Wednesday's debate with his refusal to commit to accepting the outcome of the election, now less than three weeks away. #DebateNight

Guess This Chart

• This pharmaceuticals company, which focuses on a specific disease, announced a secondary offering of 3.75 million shares Thursday morning, despite reports of weak investor demand.
• A former executive at this company was charged with insider trading ahead of a drug data release in September.
• Sympathy plays include Cascadian Therapeutics, Array Biopharma and MacroGenics.

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