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Here are the top news, trends, and analysis investors need to get their trading day started:

1. Stock futures indicate more weakness

Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Source: NYSE

Futures linked to major US stock indices were lower, pointing to Wall Street for the third day in a row.

Futures contracts linked to the Dow Jones Industrial Average indicated a loss of around 50 points on opening. S&P 500 futures fell 0.2% and Nasdaq 100 futures lost 0.2%. Big Tech, badly hit in the previous session due to rising bond yields, continued to trade in the red on the pre-market. Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Alphabet and Netflix all fell slightly in early trading.

Stocks posted heavy losses during Wednesday’s regular trading as rising bond yields frightened investors. The S&P 500 fell 1.3% while the DJIA was down 119 points, or 0.38%. The Nasdaq Composite was the relative underperformer, falling 2.7% as tech names fell.

Among the market-moving events on Thursday was the speech by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell at the Wall Street Journal’s Jobs Summit.

2. Unemployment claims on deck

Married couple Renne Alva, 37, and Travis Wasicek, 43, sit among their belongings on Seawall Boulevard and hug to keep warm after record breaking winter temperatures in Galveston, Texas on February 18, 2021. The couple said they were last left homeless a year after losing their jobs due to the economic fallout from the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Adrees Latif | Reuters

Investors will also be informed of the pace of the labor market recovery when unemployment claims data is first released for the week ending February 27. Economists polled by Dow Jones forecast 750,000 first-time applicants.

The previous week, unemployment claims reached 730,000, well below the Dow Jones estimate of 845,000. The ongoing claims hit a new low in the pandemic-era just over 4.42 million.

3. Biden agrees to curb $ 1,400 of stimulus checks

United States President Joe Biden speaks during a virtual meeting with the House Democratic Caucus at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC on Wednesday, March 3, 2021.

Yuri Gripas | Abaca | Bloomberg | Getty Images

President Joe Biden has endorsed a plan to lower income caps for Americans to receive stimulus checks under the $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus aid package due to be passed in the coming days, a Democratic said Source on Wednesday with.

The structure would lower the House-approved ceilings on direct payments income. According to the lower chamber’s bill, individuals earning up to $ 100,000 (and joint applicants earning up to $ 200,000) would have received some amount. Under the new plan, the stimulus exam exit levels would be $ 1,400, $ 75,000 for single applicants, $ 112,500 for heads of household, and $ 150,000 for joint applicants.

The House is expected to approve the Senate version of the bill next week.

4. Melvin Capital gained more than 20% in February

This illustrative photo shows a person checking GameStop inventory on a smartphone in Los Angeles on February 17, 2021 while the Reddit, Citadel, Robinhood and Melvin Capital logos appear before the virtual hearing with GameStop inventories in the background.

Chris Delmas | AFP | Getty Images

5. The SpaceX Starship prototype rocket explodes after a successful landing

Starship’s SN10 prototype rocket is on the launchpad at the company’s Boca Chica, Texas facility.

SpaceX

SpaceX’s spaceship prototype exploded shortly after landing for the first time after a high-altitude flight test.

The cause of Wednesday’s explosion or whether it was intentional was not immediately clear. Elon Musk alternatively refers to explosions as “RUDs” or “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly”.

The company test flew with the Starship rocket Serial Number 10 or SN10. SpaceX wanted to launch the prototype to an altitude of 10 kilometers or an altitude of 32,800 feet. There were no passengers on board the rocket, which is a development vehicle and flies autonomously.

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A woman receives the second component of the Gam-COVID-Vac (Sputnik V) COVID-19 vaccine.

Valentin Sprinchak | TASS | Getty Images

LONDON – The European Medicines Agency announced Thursday that it will begin assessing the Russian coronavirus sting Sputnik V as the block aims to speed up its vaccination program.

“The EMA will assess compliance with the usual EU standards for effectiveness, safety and quality by Sputnik V. While the EMA cannot predict the overall deadlines, the evaluation of a possible application should take less time than normal,” it says in one Declaration by the regulator.

The EMA uses an ongoing review to examine the data for the sting developed in Russia. This will allow the European Medical Authority to assess its effectiveness as it will have all the information it needs before the vaccine manufacturer can apply for formal approval. By analyzing the studies before submitting the application, the potential EMA approval could come faster than usual.

The news comes after some European countries announced they would be giving Sputnik V bypassing the regulator. Slovakia and Hungary have already ordered doses of the Russian sting, while the Czech Republic and Austria are considering the vaccine.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said in January that she was “open” to the idea of ​​producing Russia’s coronavirus vaccine in the European Union.

Negative pressure

European countries are under pressure to accelerate the adoption of Covid shocks as their program lags well behind other parts of the world such as Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom.

The region is still largely closed due to social restrictions, which has a negative impact on the economy and people’s livelihoods.

Austria and Denmark recently partnered with Israel to manufacture second generation vaccines to treat variants of Covid-19. At the time of the announcement, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz mentioned that the EMA had approved vaccines to combat the pandemic too slowly.

The facility has approved three vaccines to date: Pfizer’s, AstraZeneca’s, and Moderna’s.

In addition, European countries have criticized pharmaceutical companies for some hurdles in manufacturing and supplying the vaccines.

The European nations have agreed that coordinated action is the best way to address the health emergency and tasked the European Commission with negotiating contracts with the pharmaceutical companies.

However, under European law, EU member states are still allowed to approve their own vaccines without waiting for approval at EU level.

The SN10 spacecraft prototype returns for a soft landing on a concrete slab at the company’s facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

SpaceX

SpaceX’s spaceship prototype exploded for the first time shortly after landing after a high-altitude flight test on Wednesday.

The cause of the explosion, or whether it was intentional, was not immediately clear. Elon Musk alternatively refers to explosions as “RUDs” or “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly”.

The company test flew with the Starship rocket Serial Number 10 or SN10. SpaceX wanted to launch the prototype to an altitude of 10 kilometers or an altitude of 32,800 feet. There were no passengers on board the rocket as it is a development vehicle and flies autonomously.

The SN10 flight was similar to SpaceX’s December and February when it tested the SN8 and SN9 prototypes. Both earlier missiles served multiple development goals – including testing aerodynamics, turning off the engines one at a time, and turning them around to align for landing – but both prototypes exploded on impact when attempting to land and couldn’t slow down enough.

As with the SN8 and SN9, the goal of the SN10 flight was not necessarily to reach the maximum altitude, but rather to test several important parts of the spacecraft system. SpaceX fired all three engines to take off, then shut them off one by one as the rocket neared its intended altitude.

SN10 then transferred propellant from the main tanks to the collection tanks before turning for the “belly flop” re-entry maneuver – which allows it to descend through the air in a controlled manner using the missile’s four flaps. In the final moments of the descent, SpaceX turned the rocket over and brought it back into a vertical orientation. The Raptor engines were fired to slow down for landing.

“The third time is the allure, as the saying goes – we had a successful soft touchdown on the landing pad,” said John Insprucker, SpaceX principal integration engineer, on the company’s webcast

The spacecraft SN10 ignites its three engines and turns around before landing.

SpaceX

The Starship prototype stands about 150 feet tall, or about the size of a 15-story building, and is powered by three Raptor rocket engines. The rocket is made of stainless steel and represents the early versions of the rocket introduced in 2019.

“The Texas team has several more suborbital test vehicles under construction, with the number 11 going to be available on the pad in the near future,” Insprucker said.

Musk’s company develops Starship with the goal of bringing cargo and people on missions to the moon and Mars.

Starship is one of two “Manhattan projects” that SpaceX is developing at the same time. The other is the Starlink satellite internet program. Musk previously estimated that Starship would cost around $ 5 billion to fully develop, although SpaceX has not yet disclosed how much it has spent on the program.

The company raised $ 850 million in its most recent capital raise, valued at $ 74 billion, last month.

Musk remains “very confident” that Starship “will be safe enough for human transportation by 2023” – an ambitious target as the company began serious development and testing of the missile in early 2019.

But Musk’s schedule is crucial, as Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has paid to fly a spacecraft around the moon until 2023. Maezawa announced Tuesday that he is inviting eight members of the public to join his DearMoon mission, which will be a six-day trip to the moon and back.

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Nancy Yu has been a staple in San Francisco’s Chinatown for more than two decades. Her shop, Asiastar Fantasy, sells souvenirs, gifts, and cultural items like red envelopes for the Lunar New Year. While she has overcome many challenges over the years, she has never seen anything like 2020.

“Last year was a very difficult time – not just for us in Chinatown, but for the whole city, the whole world,” said Yu.

Their sales have fallen by 80% due to the pandemic. But in the past few months, Yu has been opening her shop several hours a day to be present for the community, even if business remains low.

“We want to send a message to people and finally say, ‘Keep Chinatown open, we welcome you,'” she said. “I think it’s important that we stay open. We want to encourage people and other traders.”

A small business owner in Chinatown, San Francisco

Source: CNBC

The neighborhood has seen a decline due to the lack of tourism not just in Chinatown but in the Bay Area as a whole. In a broader sense, research by Robert Fairlie, an economics professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, shows that Asian-owned companies across the country were hit hardest of all populations by the pandemic last year. According to his study, the number of working entrepreneurs fell by 20% from February to December.

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce states that in the zip code where most of Chinatown is located, 75% of store fronts were down at some point in the past year. The same zip code also includes the financial district, which is similarly affected due to people working from home. This is comparable to the city average, where 54% of all store fronts were not operational at some point in 2020.

“Covid-19 has had a huge impact on tourism, which is a large part of San Francisco’s income – 25.8 million visitors come to San Francisco [annually]”said Rodney Fong, President and CEO of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.” It is painful to see some of these old businesses close. They are pillars of our community. “

More access to help

The latest data from the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program through late February shows that Asian-owned companies are lagging behind other demographics in terms of the number of loans approved. In 2021, more than 70,000 loans were granted to Asian-owned companies for a total of $ 3.9 billion.

Filling out the demographic questions is voluntary and therefore incomplete. In total, $ 2.1 million in loans totaling $ 156 billion were granted in 2021, with more than $ 100 billion in aid remaining in the program, which ends March 31.

A street scene in Chinatown, San Francisco

Source: CNBC

Last week, the Biden government announced changes to the PPP to ensure smaller and minority-owned companies have fair access to finance. There is currently a two-week window for companies with 20 or fewer employees to apply for help only.

In addition, the amount of money self-employed and sole proprietorships will have access to will change. This is important as the administrative projects of 70% of these companies are owned by women and minorities. In addition, $ 1 billion will be allocated to sole proprietorships in low- and middle-income areas.

Other changes include enabling PPP grants for those with non-fraudulent previous arrests or convictions for criminal offenses, for those who have defaulted on federal student loans, and for legitimate US citizens who are not citizens, such as green card holders .

Chinatown, San Francisco

Source: CNBC

Minority-owned companies are more likely to be non-employer companies, and proponents say lenders may have had less incentive to lend smaller loans to these smaller companies under the PPP, as written last year. Smaller businesses also don’t always have the established bank accounts or workforce to seek help, a rift that has widened during the pandemic, said Fong of the San Francisco Chamber.

“The pandemic has shown the digital divide between people who have access and the skills necessary to apply for PPP, which is not easy, and those who may have been left out,” he said, adding that the changes are ongoing Continued at PPP PPPs like those newly enacted by the administration will help better reach more owners. “It’s important to give everyone equal access and opportunities.”

When Yu applied for a PPP loan last year, she was initially turned down by a local bank, but was eventually given one. She is now waiting for a second drawing loan. Regardless, a local scholarship she received helped with her rent.

Anti-Asian incidents are increasing

Aside from the business impact of the pandemic, the Asian-American community as a whole faces another painful threat – an increase in violence and racism against the Asian population over the past year.

Between March 19 and December 31, Stop AAPI Hate, an organization tracking anti-Asian incidents, found more than 2,800 reports of racism and discrimination against Asian Americans in the US, including more than 100 against the elderly.

Yu said the threat was on her.

“We want people to know that we are here for peace, we are here for prosperity and for the American dream. We have the same dream. That is why we came to America,” she said.

Despite the challenges for 2020, Yu is making progress. She plans to open a second location in Chinatown next year and sell Boba tea.

– CNBC’s Betsy Spring contributed to this report.

The coronavirus pandemic caused American companies to use the internet to reach consumers, and the same goes for Wendy’s.

According to CEO Todd Penegor, who appeared on CNBC on Wednesday, the digital arm of the fast food chain is well on its way to getting a bigger share of the company’s total sales with the help of its loyalty program.

The company now expects digital to account for 10% of sales in 2021.

“We didn’t think we’d hit 10% by 2024 before the pandemic,” Penegor Jim Cramer said in a Mad Money interview. “We’re bringing a lot of active users to our app and people are getting involved with the app. We’re seeing a lot more mobile orders and that’s really because there is an advantage.”

Wendy’s also found success in the breakfast menu it launched last year. While fewer Americans commuted to the office during the pandemic, which cut their chances of getting a morning breakfast sandwich or coffee at a restaurant, breakfast sales accounted for about 7% of total revenue last year, the company said.

Penegor remained optimistic about competing with other restaurants in the morning rush. He expects the breakfast menu to account for 10% of sales by the end of 2022.

“The breakfast business is doing quite well in the face of the pandemic,” he said. “For us it is remarkable and very encouraging to be able to achieve a sales mix of 7% on our breakfast day. … What we see is a strong repetition.”

On the previous Wednesday, Wendy reported fourth quarter results that missed Wall Street’s estimates of both profit and profit. The company posted total revenue of $ 474.3 million for the quarter, up 11% from $ 427.2 last year, and net income of $ 38.7 million, up 46% from $ 26.5 million. USD. According to FactSet, analysts were looking for revenue of approximately $ 476.6 million and net income of $ 39.9 million.

For the full year, Wendy’s posted revenue of $ 1.73 million, an increase of 1.5% and a decrease of $ 117.8 million, a decrease of 14% from 2019.

US restaurant revenue increased 5.5% for the quarter and 2% for the full year.

Wendy’s shares fell more than 5% on Wednesday to a closing price of $ 20.12.