Stock market today: Live updates

Costs for wages and salaries increased less than expected in the fourth quarter of 2023, the Labor Department reported Wednesday.

The employment cost index rose 0.9% for the October-through-December period, down from 1.1% in Q3 and the smallest increase since the second quarter of 2021. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for growth of 1%.

On a 12-month basis, the index rose 4.2%, down from 5.1% at the end of 2022. The Federal Reserve watches the ECI for clues on inflation.

—Jeff Cox

Check out the companies making headlines before the bell:

• Paramount Global — The media company’s stock surged more than 13% in premarket trading on news that billionaire entrepreneur Byron Allen submitted a $14.3 billion takeover offer. The deal values Paramount at about $30 billion, including debt and equity.
• Advanced Micro Devices — The semiconductor company’s shares slid 4.3% after posting fourth-quarter earnings Tuesday that came out in line with consensus expectations. AMD beat quarterly revenue estimates, but also gave a softer-than-expected first-quarter forecast.
• Mondelez International — Shares of the snack maker dropped 4.4% after the company reported a slowdown in growth for the fourth quarter and said it expects muted growth in comparable sales for 2024. Mondelez did post a beat on fourth-quarter adjusted earnings per share and in-line revenue, however.

For the full list, read here.

— Pia Singh

Private payroll growth decelerated in January, potentially signaling that the U.S. labor market is losing steam.

ADP data Wednesday showed private payrolls added 107,000 employees in January, while economists polled by Dow Jones forecast 150,000. The slowdown in the first month of 2024 was also below the downwardly revised 158,000 in December.

— Brian Evans

The high-flying Nasdaq is poised to open lower on Wednesday, and the recent run up for some of its biggest stocks could be partially the culprit for a bad one-day move. Wolfe Research strategist Chris Senyek said in a note to clients that the post-earnings moves for some major tech stocks may be in part a reaction to their recent success.

“Yesterday, several high-profile companies saw negative price action after missing expectations and/or providing disappointing guidance. Our sense is that the AMD & GOOGL selloffs after the market can be at least be partially attributed to investors ‘selling the news’ into high expectations after strong stock runs,” the note said.

That doesn’t mean that investors should completely ignore what has been an underwhelming run of earnings.

“However, some other economically-sensitive names that hadn’t recently meaningfully outperformed also sold off, including UPS & MDLZ. While one day certainly doesn’t make a trend, we viewed yesterday’s price action as a warning sign that the economy may be slowing faster than consensus expects,” the note said.

— Jesse Pound

Novo Nordisk on Wednesday reported sharply higher sales and forecast growth for 2024 between 18% and 25% as its drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, used to treat diabetes and for weight loss, experience increased demand.

The Danish pharmaceutical company’s net sales rose 31% year-on-year in 2023, to 232.26 billion Danish krone ($33.7 billion). Operating profit rose 37%, while fourth-quarter profit was above expectations.

Novo Nordisk has soared in value over the last year, at times becoming Europe’s most valuable firm by market capitalization.

The 2023 results were fueled by strong performance in the company’s diabetes and obesity care division, with obesity care in particular spiking by 154% at CER to 41.6 billion.

Read more here.

— Jenni Reid

China’s factory activity contracted for a fourth consecutive month in January, though the official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index expectedly rebounded to 49.2 from 49 in December, a six-month low. January’s reading is in line with the median forecast in a Reuters poll.

The official non-manufacturing managers’ index rose to 50.7 in January from 50.4 in December, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics released Wednesday. Strength in the country’s services industry helped offset weakness in the construction sector amid a slump in the real estate sector.

A PMI reading above 50 indicates expansion in activity, while a reading below that level points to a contraction.

For more, please read the full story.

— Clement Tan

Shares of Samsung Electronics fell 1.21% after the company posted a 34.57% drop in operating profit in the fourth quarter from a year ago, in line with its guidance issued earlier this month.

Here are Samsung’s fourth-quarter results versus estimates:

• Revenue: 67.78 trillion Korean won (about $51 billion), vs. 69.27 trillion Korean won expected by LSEG analysts
• Operating profit: 2.82 trillion Korean won, vs. 3.43 trillion Korean won expected by LSEG analysts

In its earnings guidance earlier this month, Samsung said it expected operating profit for the October-December quarter to be 2.8 trillion South Korean won ($2.13 billion), down 35% from the same period a year ago when the firm reported an operating profit of 4.31 trillion won.

Read the full story here.

— Sheila Chiang

Australia’s consumer price index in the fourth quarter rose 4.1% year-on-year, slower than the 5.4% recorded in the third quarter and also lower than the 4.3% expected by economists polled by Reuters.

This also marks the fourth straight quarter where the inflation rate fell, and marks the lowest level since December 2021.

The trimmed inflation rate, which excludes the most volatile 30% of items, came in at 4.2%, falling from 5.2% in the third quarter.

— Lim Hui Jie 

South Korea’s industrial output cooled in December and retail sales fell, according to official data.

December manufacturing production index increased 0.6%, less than the prior month’s 3.3% increase. The reading was still higher than a Reuters poll forecast of a 0.5% increase.

On the consumption side, retail sales in December fell 0.8% from the prior month and was up 2.2% from a year ago. That follows a 1% increase in November.

South Korea’s Kospi opened 0.08% lower.

— Shreyashi Sanyal

Wilmington Trust chief economist Luke Tilley said Tuesday that he isn’t expecting any big changes in the Federal Reserve’s posture tomorrow, but that the central bank could keep laying the groundwork for rate cuts later this year.

“When the Fed changes communication, it’s really slow. It’s like turning a battleship. They do it very, very slowly. And what they need to start pivoting towards is sort of confirming the expectation of rate cuts more and more,” Tilley said.

The Wilmington Trust team expects the first rate cut from the Fed to come on May 1.

The Fed could also point to international developments like the conflict in the Middle East as a potential reason for caution on inflation, Tilley said.

“I think they will always point out risk factors, upside risk factors, for inflation, especially as they are trying to temper market expectations for a whole lot of cuts. I don’t think that that would cause them to not cut, but they will definitely cite some of those risks,” he said.

— Jesse Pound

Check out the companies making headlines in postmarket trading.

Tesla — Shares of the electric vehicle company fell 3.6%. A Delaware judge agreed to void Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s $56 billion compensation package. The decision involves a lawsuit filed by Richard Tornetta, a Tesla shareholder.

Electronic Arts — The stock declined more than 2% after its fiscal third-quarter revenue came in below estimates. EA reported $2.37 billion in revenue, while analysts had estimated $2.39 billion, according to LSEG. 

Alphabet — Shares fell around 5.5% on the company’s fourth-quarter results. Google ad revenue came in at $65.52 billion, short of analysts’ expectations for $65.94 billion, per StreetAccount. Separately, Alphabet posted a beat on top and bottom lines.

The full list can be found here.

— Hakyung Kim

Nasdaq 100 futures fell 0.8% Tuesday night, as the pullback in Microsoft and Alphabet shares dragged down the tech-heavy index.

S&P 500 futures also slid 0.4%. Meanwhile, futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average ticked up 33 points, or less than 0.1%.

— Hakyung Kim