Stocks open little changed as S&P 500 hovers near 5,000: Live updates – CNBC

Stocks opened little changed Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose about 50 points, or 0.1%. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were flat.

— Samantha Subin

New jobless claims fell slightly last week as employers remained reluctant to lay off workers.

Weekly jobless claims for the week ended February 3 were 218,000, down 9,000 from the previous week and slightly below the Dow Jones estimate of 220,000. The Ministry of Labor reported Thursday.

The number of continued applications delayed by one week fell by 23,000 to 1.87 million, slightly below FactSet’s estimate of 1.88 million.

—Jeff Cox

Arm Holdings shares soared nearly 30% after the company beat Wall Street’s quarterly expectations and issued strong profit forecasts on the back of exploding demand for artificial intelligence.

The British semiconductor maker posted an adjusted profit of 29 cents per share on total sales of $824 million. That beat the EPS of 25 cents and revenue of $761 million expected by analysts surveyed by LSEG.

Arm said it expects fiscal fourth-quarter sales to be in the range of $850 million to $900 million, higher than analysts’ expectations of $780 million.

The company said licensing and other revenues rose 18% year over year as more companies chose to license its central processing unit designs to power artificial intelligence.

— Samantha Subin, Kif Leswing

Walt Disney Co.’s stock rose nearly 8% in premarket after the entertainment giant reported strong earnings and guidance after the bell on Wednesday as it lowered streaming costs.

The company reported adjusted earnings of $1.22 per share, beating LSEG’s estimate of 99 cents. Revenue was $23.55 billion, lower than analysts’ expectations of $23.64 billion. Management also said it expects adjusted earnings for the fiscal year to increase 20% to $4.60 per share.

Disney also said it is poised to meet or exceed its goal of reducing costs by at least $7.5 billion by the end of fiscal year 2024, and is acquiring a $1.5 billion stake in Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite. Announced.

The company also announced that its flagship ESPN streaming service, set to launch in 2025, will exclusively stream Taylor Swift’s Ella Tour film.

— Samantha Subin, Sarah Witten

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei Stock Average hit a new 34-year high on Thursday, rising 1.71% to 36,738.42.

The index has surpassed the all-time high of 36,546.95 reached on January 22, after Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Shinichi Uchida said, “Even after ending its negative interest rate policy, the Bank of Japan is unlikely to actively raise interest rates.” This was a huge increase. According to Reuters.

The Bank of Japan’s base interest rate is currently -0.1%. The bank has said it will not raise interest rates until it determines that inflation can be maintained at the Bank of Japan’s 2% target.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China’s producer prices fell for the 16th consecutive month in January, with the producer price index in January falling 2.5% year-on-year. reported on thursdayThis followed the 2.7% decline in December and was slightly higher than the expected 2.6% decline.

Consumer prices in the world’s second-largest economy have fallen for the fourth consecutive month, with the consumer price index January was down 0.8%. On an annual basis, this exceeded the median forecast of a 0.5% decline in a Reuters poll. CPI fell by 0.3% in December.

However, on a monthly basis, the CPI rose 0.3% in January compared to December, slightly below the median estimate of a 0.4% rise.

Read the full article for more information.

— Clement Tan

Shares in Japanese investment holding company SoftBank rose more than 8% in morning trading after semiconductor maker Arm reported better-than-expected results.

Arm shares soared as much as 41% after the chip designer reported sales and profits that beat analysts’ expectations and gave a strong outlook for the coming quarter.

SoftBank listed Arm in September and still holds about 930 million shares, about 90% of the chip designer’s outstanding shares.

SoftBank’s Arm shares rose nearly $16 billion after the earnings report, from nearly $71.6 billion to $87.4 billion. That means Arm’s gains exceeded the $14 billion loss it incurred on its investment in co-working space provider WeWork, which filed for bankruptcy in November.

At Wednesday’s trading high, the S&P 500 index reached 4,999.89, reaching the 5,000 level, a historic milestone.

The first time the S&P 500 closed above 4,000 was on April 21, 2021. If the large-cap benchmark reached he 5,000, it would take almost three years to reach his last 1,000 points.

PayPal shares fell more than 5% in after-hours trading after the payments company released full-year and first-quarter guidance that was slightly less than expected.

LSEG said the company’s full-year earnings are expected to be $5.10 per share, below analysts’ expectations of $5.48. PayPal’s fourth-quarter results exceeded expectations.

— Yun Lee