Stock market news live updates: Stock futures point to a lower open

August 21, 2020

2 minutes read

Stocks futures ticked lower Friday morning following a tech-led trading a day earlier. The Nasdaq closed out the regular session at yet another record high.

TSLA) shares added to gains in early trading, after the electric car-maker’s stock rallied above $2,000 per share for the first time ever and brought its year to date advance to more than 370%. Uber (UBER) and Lyft (LYFT) shares steadied following a jump on Thursday, after the ride-hailing giants received a temporary extension from a California appeals court on having to reclassify their drivers as employees rather than contract gig workers.

So far this week, the broader market has drifted sideways after the S&P 500 hit a record high earlier in the week. Investors have piled back into technology and “stay-at-home” stocks, as signs emerge that the economic recovery may drag on, and be weighed down by a lack of new fiscal stimulus into the domestic economy in the near-term. On Thursday, the Labor Department’s latest weekly jobless claims report showed new unemployment claims rose back above 1 million after briefly improving to below that level last week, highlighting the distance the economy and labor market especially still have to regain amid the pandemic.

“This is a temporary setback, as Covid-19 levels are still high but dropping, and re-openings continue, though at a slower pace given Covid-19’s surge in July,” Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, said in an email Thursday. “Though temporary, it underscores the economy is fighting in the trenches with Covid-19 now and Americans are losing jobs through secondary layoffs, bankruptcies and other factors that happen too quickly and too chaotically to accurately be accounted for week-to-week.”

Later Friday morning, investors are set to receive another set of data on the state of the housing market in the form of existing home sales. These are expected to jump another 14.6% in July, following a 20.7% gain in June.

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