5 things to know before the stock exchange opens on Thursday 23 December

Santa Claus gestures during the 96th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in Manhattan, New York City, United States, November 24, 2022.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Here are the key news investors need to start their trading day:
1[ads1]. Walking map?
Maybe the Santa will deliver to the stock exchange, after all. There are still two trading days left until Christmas, and Wednesday showed that shares are still on the rise, even in this otherwise slow month. The major indexes rose, with the Dow jumping more than 500 points, the S&P up 1.49% and the Nasdaq up 1.54%. Still, stocks are on track to end December in the red and potentially end up completing their worst annual performance in 14 years. On Thursday, investors will chew over the latest jobless claims. Read live market updates here.
2. Micron cuts thousands of jobs

Semiconductor manufacturer Micron, pressured by declining demand for personal computers, said it would reduce its workforce by about 10% while suspending bonuses. That amounts to a few thousand employees, as a recent filing showed the company had around 48,000 employees. Micron announced the decision when it released its latest quarterly results and future guidance, both of which fell short of Wall Street expectations. “In recent months, we have seen a dramatic drop in demand,” CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in prepared remarks.
3. SBF’s ex-colleagues cooperate with FB
The FTX logo displayed on a phone screen is seen through the broken glass in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on November 14, 2022.
Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
If you’ve been following the collapse of crypto exchange FTX and the prosecution of its founder and mastermind, Sam Bankman-Fried, you’ve probably wondered why we haven’t heard from Gary Wang and Caroline Ellison. And if you suspected they were working with the feds, you were right. On Wednesday night, federal prosecutors revealed that Wang, a co-founder of FTX, and Ellison, who was co-CEO of sister firm Alameda Research, had agreed to plead guilty to federal crimes while working with authorities on the case of the fallen crypto. solid. The news broke while Bankman-Fried, aka SBF, was on a flight from the Bahamas to the United States to face his own prosecution.
4. Zelenskyy praises US ‘investment’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took Washington by storm on Wednesday in what has been hailed as a triumphant visit. It was his first known excursion outside Ukraine’s borders since Russia launched its unprovoked invasion of the former Soviet country in February. Zelenskyy’s trip to the US capital included a meeting and press conference with President Joe Biden at the White House and a rousing 32-minute speech to a joint session of Congress. “Thank you for both the economic packages you have already given us and the ones you may be willing to decide on,” he told lawmakers, who are set to approve more than $44 billion in new aid to Ukraine. “Your money is not charity. It is an investment in global security and democracy, which we handle in the most responsible way.”
5. House sales have fallen for 10 months in a row

Another day, another gloomy scrap of data from the housing market. Home sales fell by a deeper-than-expected 7.7% in November from October, marking the tenth consecutive month of sales declines. The sales reflect contracts entered into in September and October, when interest rates had peaked before falling slightly in recent weeks. (Although they’re still about double what they were at the beginning of this year.) “Essentially, the residential real estate market was frozen in November, which is similar to the sales activity seen during the Covid-19 economic shutdowns in 2020,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors.
– CNBC’s Samantha Subin, Kif Lewing, MacKenzie Sigalos, Rohan Goswami, Christina Wilkie, Chelsey Cox and Diana Olick contributed to this report.
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