US stocks inched higher on Thursday as Wall Street digested fresh jobs data, with traders increasingly baking in expectations that the Federal Reserve will deliver a December rate cut.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) and the S&P 500 (^GSPC) put on around 0.2%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) also added nearly 0.2% on the heels of small closing gains for Wall Street stocks.

Wall Street is under growing conviction that the Fed will shift toward easing at its policy meeting next week, fueled by support from key officials and a lackluster run of economic data. Traders are pricing in an 89% probability of a rate cut, per CME FedWatch, after a softer-than-expected ADP reading on private employment.

Speculation that Kevin Hassett will replace Jerome Powell as Fed chair is playing into expectations for lower rates. The White House's top economic advisor is seen as likely to usher in a more-dovish era at the Fed, given his backer President Trump's aggressive campaign for rapid cuts. But markets are said to be doubtful about Hassett, and bond investors have reportedly voiced concerns to the US Treasury.

Further clues to the state of the labor market came Thursday, with jobless claims unexpectedly falling but another report finding last month was the worst November for corporate layoffs in three years. Markets are now starting to count down to Friday's release of the delayed September PCE reading on consumer prices — the Fed's preferred gauge of inflation — to put rate-cut optimism to a tougher test.

With earnings season in its final stretch, Salesforce (CRM) shares popped after the business software maker posted a raised outlook that both topped analyst expectations. Meanwhile, Snowflake (SNOW) stock tumbled after the AI data cloud provider's revenue guidance fell short, even as it deepened its partnership with Anthropic (ANTH.PVT).

Results from retailers Dollar General (DG) and Kroger (KR) could shed light on the resilience of the consumer, while Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) earnings are also on the docket on Thursday.

US stocks nudged higher at the market open on Thursday as labor market data helped further cement bets for a December rate cut.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) and the S&P 500 (^GSPC) added around 0.2%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) hovered above the flat line.

The moves come on the heels of modest gains for stocks on Wednesday.

Meta (META) stock jumped by over 5% after the opening bell on Thursday after Bloomberg reported that CEO Mark Zuckerberg is planning to cut up to 30% of its budget for metaverse efforts.

The proposed budget cuts, being discussed as part of the company's annual budget planning, would likely include layoffs and affect its virtual reality game, Meta Horizon Worlds, and its Quest VR headset, according to people familiar with the matter.

Zuckerberg pivoted the social media company to focus on the metaverse in 2021 as the company faced criticism over its content moderation and privacy practices, even renaming the company to reflect its bet on the technology.

But many on Wall Street weren't keen on the move — or the billions of dollars Meta diverted toward the effort.

Still, Meta has shown it's still making a push to become a hardware company, diversifying beyond its apps. On Wednesday, reports surfaced that Meta poached Apple's head of user interface design, Alan Dye, signaling its focus on AI-enabled consumer devices.

Kroger (KR) stock fell about 3% in premarket trading after the food retailer reported little revenue growth year over year.

The Cincinnati-based grocery chain posted adjusted earnings per share of $1.05, slightly beating Wall Street analysts' expectations of $1.03 earnings per share, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

However, third quarter revenue of $33.9 billion was roughly unchanged from the same period a year ago, $33.6 billion, and missed analyst estimates of $34.1 billion. Same-store sales, excluding fuel, grew 2.6% year over year.

Kroger expects same-store sales ex-fuel to grow 2.8%-3.0%, narrower than its previous range of 2.7%-3.4%. The company also raised the lower end of its EPS guidance to $4.75-$4.80 from $4.70-$4.80 previously.

In a Nov. 25 note, JPMorgan analysts noted that the consumer and competitive environment has grown notably tougher for food retailers.

\\"Sentiment toward food retailers seems to have soured a bit over the past few months, including for [Kroger],\\" the analysts wrote. \\"When inflationary concerns were more persistent in the food space and the consumer environment was stronger, the food retail space was better liked.\\"

The analysts noted a few factors putting pressure on Kroger shares, in particular, in recent months: Amazon's (AMZN) push into grocery, Walmart (WMT) taking share in grocery and ramping up price competition, concerns about food inflation reigniting, and Nielsen data showing slower sales growth.

Read more live coverage of corporate earnings here.

Yahoo Finance's Hamza Shaban writes:

It's hard to tell just looking at the price charts whether bitcoin (BTC-USD) investors have been naughty or nice.

A bruising November has given way to some relief — and the prospect of a Santa rally. And while the Thanksgiving table chatter might have moved on to prediction markets, more players in the market are taking seriously the idea that crypto is here to stay.

The dramatic swing in sentiment — bitcoin has dropped roughly 30% from its recent highs — has been a painful reminder of crypto's volatility. But even if banks and a pro-crypto government have made it easier for people to accept digital currencies, investors ultimately are the ones who have to risk their money to push prices higher.

... The bullish notion that crypto is the new gold, even as a loose metaphor, has strained under the relative performance of the two assets. When markets convulsed during key moments this year, investors treated gold like a refuge and crypto like a bad habit. Which looked even less flattering with the S&P 500 (^GSPC) up about 16% year to date, leaving crypto off the risk-on train.

Criticizing bitcoin's propensity to crumble under pressure is hardly new. But the fallback position of acknowledging that crypto is still in its early stages in the financial system is also, at this point, a tired comeback.

Read more here in the takeaway from today's Morning Brief.

Economic data: Challenger job cuts (November); Initial jobless claims (week ended Nov. 29); Continuing claims (week ended Nov. 22)

Earnings: Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD), Bank of Montreal (BMO), Kroger (KR), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Ulta Beauty (ULTA), Dollar General (DG), Samsara (IOT), The Cooper Companies (COO), DocuSign (DOCU), Brown-Forman Corporation (BF-A, BF-B), Rubrik (RBRK)

Here are some of the biggest stories you may have missed overnight and early this morning:

Companies make 71,000 layoffs in worst November since 2022

'K-shaped' economy has Wall Street on edge. Why it may be OK.

Bitcoin heads into 2026 with renewed acceptance — and volatility

Trump meets Nvidia's CEO to talk AI chip curbs: Source

Market doubts Hassett can deliver at Fed: Top fund manager

Silver retreats from record high as traders lock in profits

Goldman: Copper's 'breakout' above $11,000 won't last

Alphabet's AI chips are a potential $900B 'secret sauce'

Meta hit by EU antitrust probe into AI use in WhatsApp

Wall Street shifts AI narrative from 'bubble' to 'air pocket'

Mark Cuban urges Trump to cut fees holding back US generics

Yahoo Finance's Emma Ockerman reports:

US companies announced 71,321 layoffs last month, according to a Thursday report from the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, as workers stressed about the state of a sluggish job market.

The cuts were up 24% from the nearly 58,000 planned layoffs announced in November 2024, and amounted to the highest total for the month since 2022.

The data comes on the heels of last month’s brutal Challenger, Gray & Christmas report, which detailed the worst October for layoff plans since 2003 amid a rash of cuts from major employers like Amazon, challenging the narrative that the labor market was stuck in a state of low hiring and low firing. Layoff announcements last month were at 153,074.

“Layoff plans fell last month, certainly a positive sign. That said, job cuts in November have risen above 70,000 only twice since 2008: in 2022 and in 2008,” Andy Challenger, workplace expert and chief revenue officer for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in the report.

Read more here.

Yahoo Finance's Allie Canal reports:

Two of Wall Street’s biggest firms say the AI boom is far from a speculative mania.

Instead, BlackRock and Bank of America say this cycle is being driven by real corporate investment, earnings, and productivity gains — not the kind of irrational exuberance that defined the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s.

\\"We don't think the bubble framing is that useful at this stage for investors,\\" Jean Boivin, head of the BlackRock Investment Institute, said at a media roundtable on Tuesday.

“We want to avoid just putting everything on a backward-looking kind of metric or assessment,\\" he continued, noting it's \\"incomplete\\" to describe the AI boom as a bubble given the build-out continues to unfold at an “unprecedented” scale and pace.

Boivin also pointed to the healthy level of skepticism in markets today.

“There is so much talk about the potential of the bubble … people are conscious of the risk,” he said. “It’s when there’s no discussion of that that we should be more worried.”

BlackRock argues the spending boom in AI is so large that it has become the macro story itself, saying the scale of corporate investment could push US GDP growth consistently above the 2% trend that has dominated for decades.

Read more here.

UiPath (PATH) stock rose 9% during premarket hours on Thursday after the software company reported a quarterly profit in its third quarter earnings.

Hormel Foods (HRL) stock rose 6% before the bell on Thursday after reporting higher sales in its fourth quarter. The company swung to a loss as profits remained under pressure amid ongoing inflation.

PayPal (PYPL) stock fell more than 1% in premarket trading after the company said it expects growth in its key branded checkout service to slow in the fourth quarter.

Salesforce (CRM) stock took a leg higher in premarket on the company's third quarter earnings beat and improved outlook.

The software giant reported third quarter diluted earnings per share of $3.25, beating estimates of $2.58 per share, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Revenue of $10.27 billion rose 8.6% year over year and was roughly in line with estimates.

Reuters reports:

Salesforce raised its fiscal 2026 revenue forecast ​on Wednesday, anticipating growth from ‌its artificial intelligence agent platform due to ‌strong enterprise demand, sending its shares up around 4% in extended trading.

The business software provider now expects ⁠revenue in ‌the range of $41.45 billion to $41.55 billion, compared with its ‍prior forecast of between $41.1 billion and $41.3 billion.

The forecast signal that monetization for the ​company's Agentforce platform is picking ‌up pace as enterprises gravitate towards autonomous AI to streamline and automate repetitive and administrative tasks.

\\"Our Agentforce and Data 360 products are ⁠the momentum drivers, ​hitting nearly $1.4 billion in ​ARR—an explosive 114% year-over-year gain,\\" said Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.

Read more here.

Five Below (FIVE) shares rose early on Thursday as it became the latest value retailer to benefit from consumers' shift toward more value-oriented purchases, as high-income shoppers drive traffic at dollar stores and other bargain outlets.

\\"We've seen really nice traffic growth and growth in both new customers as well as retention,\\" Five Below CEO Winnie Park said on the company's earnings call. \\"What's really worked in terms of growth is an expansion of the idea of what value looks like. We still curate a great assortment — roughly 80% of the assortment is $5 and below — but we took a lot of attention to those items above $5 and specifically packing a ton of value at $7, $10, $15.\\"

Net sales increased 23.1% year over year to $1 billion in the third quarter, surpassing estimates of $983 million, per S&P Global Market Intelligence. Same-store sales rose by 12.4% year over year.

Earnings per share reached $0.66, beating estimates for $0.26 per share, sending the stock 4% higher in after-hours trading.

Five Below also raised its full-year sales outlook to a range of $4.62 billion to $4.65 billion. The company also raised its forecast for diluted income per share to a range of $5.51 to $5.69 from $4.56 to $4.96 previously.

For the fourth quarter, net sales are expected to be in the range of $1.58 billion to $1.61 billion.

The Financial Times reports:

Bond investors have told the US Treasury they are concerned about Kevin Hassett’s potential appointment as Federal Reserve chair, worrying he will cut interest rates aggressively to please President Donald Trump.

The Treasury department solicited feedback on Hassett and other candidates in one-on-one conversations with executives at major Wall Street banks, asset management giants and other big players in the US debt market, according to several people familiar with the conversations.

... The doubts among market participants about Hassett reflect a broader anxiety on Wall Street about the transition at the Fed’s helm as Trump prepares to nominate a new leader of the central bank. Some senior bond market participants would have preferred other candidates such as BlackRock’s Rick Rieder and Fed governor Christopher Waller who were seen as more independent from Trump than Hassett.

Several of the market participants the Treasury contacted said they were worried about Hassett’s alignment with Trump, who has insisted rates should be cut sharply and has called Powell a “stubborn mule” for the central bank’s decision to only modestly lower borrowing costs this year.

Read more here (premium)

Snowflake (SNOW) stock tumbled after the AI data cloud provider reported a narrower-than-expected loss but issued guidance that fell short of the Street's estimates. The company also announced it expanded its partnership with Anthropic (ANTH.PVT).

Snowflake shares fell 8% in pre-market trading on Thursday.

The Montana-based company reported on Wednesday that revenue grew 29% year over year to $1.15 billion during the quarter, slightly missing Wall Street's estimates of $1.18 billion, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Snowflake reported a net loss per share of $0.87, a smaller loss than the $0.96 per share analysts were expecting.

For the fourth quarter, Snowflake guided for product revenue between $1.19 billion and $1.2 billion, which was slightly below the midpoint revenue forecast by the Street of $1.23 billion. The full-year revenue guidance of $4.44 billion also fell below expectations of $4.6 billion.

Snowflake also announced a multiyear, $200 million agreement with Anthropic that will make Anthropic’s Claude AI models available on the Snowflake platform and establish a joint venture to deploy AI agents across the world's largest enterprises.

The deal deepens Snowflake's relationship with Anthropic, as the company has already processed trillions of Claude tokens on its platform.

\\"Enterprises have spent years building secure, trusted data environments, and now they want AI that can work within those environments without compromise,\\" Anthropic CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei said in a statement. \\"This partnership brings Claude directly into Snowflake, where that data already lives. It's a meaningful step toward making frontier AI genuinely useful for businesses.\\"

Reuters reports:

Japan's Nikkei 225 (^N225) index climbed 1.7% to 50,705.76 on expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve will cut its main interest rate next week, even while traders speculate over whether the Bank of Japan will raise interest rates this month.

Technology and telecoms giant SoftBank Group Corp.'s shares jumped 8.8%.

The government's 10-year bond yield also rose above 1.9%, it's highest since 2007.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng index (^HSI) reversed early trading losses, adding 0.2% to 25,816.50, led by gains for tech and consumer stocks. The Shanghai Composite index edged less than 0.1% higher, to 3,879.52.

South Korea's Kospi (^KS11) index fell 0.7% to 4,008.22, with weakness in tech and automotive stocks weighing on the benchmark.

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 (^AXJO) index recovered from a slump earlier in the day, adding less than 0.1% to 8,603.20.

Taiwan's Taiex index fell nearly 0.3%.

Read more here.

Bloomberg reports:

Oil held a gain as investors weighed the outlook for a ceasefire in Ukraine and the fallout from tensions between the US and Venezuela.

Brent (BZ=F) traded below $63 a barrel after climbing 0.4% on Wednesday, while West Texas Intermediate (CL=F) was near $59. US President Donald Trump said a meeting between his envoy and President Vladimir Putin was “reasonably good” but acknowledged the outcome for a peace deal was uncertain.

Separately, Trump reiterated the US will start striking drug cartels on land in Venezuela very soon. American forces have been massing in the region, with the situation adding some risk premium to oil prices, partially offsetting concerns around a surplus that’s expected to swell to a record next year.

Read more here.