Roblox, Oracle, Greenland Tech, Kindred Biosciences: What to Watch When the Stock Market Opens Today

• Futures tied to the S&P 500 bounced between small gains and losses, pointing to muted moves at the open. The broad market index ended Tuesday down 0.2%. Nasdaq-100 futures ticked up 0.1% Wednesday, suggesting gains in technology stocks.
• Copper prices have stabilized after taking a leg down on China’s plans to release national reserves of major industrial metals to rein in surging commodities prices.

What’s Coming Up

• The Federal Reserve will release its latest policy statement and economic forecast at 2 p.m. ET. It could include plans for eventually scaling back easy-money policies amid signs of accelerating economic growth and inflation.
• Earnings are due from

  Lennar

  LEN.B -0.20%

  and

  Honest

  HNST -1.36%

  after the close.

Market Movers to Watch

• Oracle

  ORCL -6.26%

  slid 5.1% ahead of the bell. Earnings last night handily beat forecasts, but investors appear unsettled about plans to spend more money on building out the technology company’s cloud business.

• Shares of electric-vehicle maker

  Greenland Technologies

  GTEC 4.29%

  were supercharged, soaring 23% premarket, after it launched an online pre-booking service and said it expects to start deliveries in August, ahead of schedule.

• Animal urges:

  Kindred Biosciences

  KIN 44.79%

  surged 45% premarket.

  Elanco Animal Health

  ELAN 2.53%

  has agreed to buy Kindred for about $440 million, combining two animal-health companies. Elanco added 4%.

• Not all fun and games:

  Roblox

  RBLX -6.04%

  shares slid 9% after the gaming platform company said daily active users were down 1% in May from April, though they were up 28% from a year ago.

• Torchlight Energy Resources

  TRCH 27.65%

  was up another 12.4% premarket. On Tuesday the oil-and-gas exploration company lit a fire under its share price by declaring a special dividend of Series A preferred stock, sending it up more than 40%.

• La-Z-Boy,

  LZB -8.16%

  lazy shares? The furniture maker was down 4.2% premarket after it reported rising sales but said it sees higher raw materials prices affecting future results.

• Are investors over Covid-19? An antibody treatment developed by

  Regeneron Pharmaceuticals

  REGN 1.21%

  was shown to significantly cut the risk of death among certain hospitalized Covid-19 patients. And the FDA cleared an additional batch of

  Johnson & Johnson

  JNJ 0.40%

  Covid-19 vaccine doses from a troubled production plant in Baltimore. Both stocks hardly budged premarket. Novavax has also mostly fallen since its Covid-19 shot was shown in a trial to be highly effective.

• H&R Block

  HRB -8.30%

  slipped 2.5%, even after the tax preparer reported higher revenue and earnings per share for the recent quarter and raised its dividend. It also changed its fiscal year to better align with the complete tax season.

• General Motors

  GM 1.90%

  added 2.1% premarket after it said it will boost its investment in electric vehicles through 2025 by 75% from its pre-pandemic commitment.

• DraftKings

  DKNG 0.62%

  clawed back 1% ahead of the bell, after closing down more than 4% on Tuesday when short seller Hindenburg Research said that the sports-betting firm’s gambling-technology subsidiary SBTech operates in countries where gambling is banned

Market Facts

• The Stoxx Europe 600 hit its eighth consecutive record close on Tuesday, as it edged up 0.1%. It was the second-longest record streak since its inception, with the longest being a 12-day run that ended July 17, 1987.
• A group of uranium mining companies saw their stock prices plunge on Monday after news emerged that a nuclear power plant in Southeast China flagged a performance issue. A basket of uranium-related companies tracked by the Global X Uranium fell 6.5%. They regained some of that lost ground by Tuesday afternoon.
• On this day in 1812, the state of New York chartered a new institution called City Bank of New York, capitalized at $2 million, with $800,000 already raised. Today it is a global behemoth called Citigroup.

Chart of the Day

• Any signal that the Federal Reserve will tighten policy on Wednesday could ripple across emerging markets that are dependent on the U.S. dollar. Prime among them is Turkey.

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