10 Things You Need To Know Before The Opening Bell

10 Things Before Opening Bell

January 14, 2015

Advertisement Good morning! Here is what you need to know before the market opens on Wednesday. Copper Prices  Plunged. Overnight, the price of March copper futures sank by as much as 6% to below $2.50 per pound in New York for the first time in about five years. Analysts at Morgan Stanley put the move down to "speculation that cheaper energy costs will encourage mining companies to increase production." Commodities Overall Have Been Knocked To A 12-Year Low. Declines in copper and oil prices helped drag the Bloomberg Commodities Index to a 12-year low, with global growth expected to slow even further. Futures Are Lower. US stock futures are lower Wednesday after the markets on Tuesday saw their third straight day of losses. Dow futures were down about 75 points, S&P 500 futures were down about 8, and Nasdaq futures were down 13. On Tuesday, stocks opened sharply higherbefore giving up all of that rally and closing in the red. Jeff Gundlach's 2015 Outlook Is Out. "Bond Kind" Jeff Gundlach of DoubleLine Funds gave a presentation Tuesday night outlining his view on the world of investing for 2015. Gundlach expects volatility to return to the markets in a big way this year, and he also doesn't think oil has hit a bottom. Gundlach, who in 2014 was one of the few strategists who anticipated bond yields falling, thinks the 10-year yield, currently at about 1.9%, can fall further. JPMorgan's Earnings Missed Expectations. JPMorgan Chase kicked off US bank earnings Wednesday morning with a disappointment. JPMorgan reported earnings per share of $1.19against expectations for $1.31 on revenue that also missed expectations. The bank's results also included nearly $1 billion in legal costs. GoPro Shares Got Crushed. Shares of the wearable-camera company GoPro fell more than 12% on Tuesday at just below $50 a share after a report by Patently Apple said Apple was granted a patent for a "GoPro-like camera system." In premarket trading Wednesday, GoPro shares were up about 2%, and Business Insider's Steve Kovach noted Tuesday that investor fears that Apple could wipe out GoPro might be overblown: Apple files patents all the time.  Plunging Oil Prices Are Driving Inventories Near Maximum Levels. Oil prices hit fresh six-year lows Tuesday, and storage trends also imply further price falls, with US stocks possibly approaching 80% of capacity by the coming spring season, according to the US-based PIRA Energy Group. "The last time the US built inventories in December was in the middle of the financial crisis in 2008," the firm said.  Goldman Is Reportedly Writing Down Its Loan To Banco Espirito Santo. Goldman Sachs had to write down its loan to the troubled Portuguese bank in the fourth quarter, cutting the bank's profit and some employees' bonuses, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Tesla Shares Slumped After A Comment About Weak China Sales. Tesla Motors Inc shares slumped late Tuesday after CEO Elon Musk said the luxury electric carmaker's sales in China were "unexpectedly weak" during the fourth quarter. But he assured an audience in Detroit the problems were being fixed. The World Bank Slashed Growth Forecasts Pretty Much Everywhere Except The US."The global economy is running on a single engine," said Kaushik Basu, the World Bank's chief economist, according to the Financial Times. US growth was uprated from a likely 3% to 3.2% for this year, and eurozone growth expectations were pared back to 1.1% from 1.8%.