5 issues to know earlier than the inventory market opens Friday, December 15

Listed here are crucial information gadgets that traders want to start out their buying and selling day:

The bulls shall be glad. The Dow Jones Industrial Common stored climbing Thursday, including to its all-time excessive. It is up 2.8% for the week and is headed for a nine-week profitable streak, its longest run since 2019. The S&P 500, in the meantime, may quickly be a part of the Dow with its personal excessive. The broad market index, which additionally rose Thursday, is lower than 1.6% away from a file shut set in January 2022. And if that wasn’t bullish sufficient information, a bull someway acquired free on New Jersey prepare tracks Thursday and disrupted commuter service between Newark, New Jersey, and New York Metropolis. Comply with live market updates.

General Motors’ Cruise mentioned Thursday it’s going to lay off 900 staff, or almost 1 / 4 of its workforce. The cuts, which primarily hit industrial operations and associated company capabilities, comply with a spherical of contractor layoffs at Cruise final month. Only a day earlier, the self-driving automotive firm had dismissed 9 “key leaders” amid ongoing security investigations sparked by an October accident in San Francisco that grounded Cruise’s robotaxi fleet. GM additionally plans to lay off about 1,300 staff in Michigan, beginning early subsequent yr. Most of these layoffs had been anticipated as a result of sure car fashions shall be ending manufacturing.

LinkedIn is shifting its plans. The social media website has called off a undertaking, code-named “Blueshift,” that might have moved its information heart expertise to Microsoft Azure, a setback for its mother or father firm. CNBC’s Jordan Novet studies that the choice is a serious reversal for LinkedIn, which initially introduced its meant transfer to Azure in 2019. That got here three years after Microsoft acquired the platform for $27 billion. Microsoft — which is chasing Amazon Net Providers within the profitable cloud infrastructure market — has counted on cloud expertise and providers to gas a lot of its development.

Intel needs to get in on the AI craze. The corporate unveiled new computer chips at a New York occasion on Thursday that included a synthetic intelligence chip for generative AI software program. Intel did not reveal many particulars about that chip, known as Gaudi3, nevertheless it will compete with rival chips from Nvidia and AMD. Intel is hoping to lure AI corporations away from Nvidia’s dominant place available in the market. Nvidia — which has tech behind among the most distinguished AI fashions within the area, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT — has seen its inventory surge almost 230% yr so far whereas Intel shares are up 68%. 

Ukraine moved one step nearer to European Union membership after leaders in Brussels agreed to open negotiations with the nation. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed the shock determination as “a victory” for his war-torn nation and Europe. Hungary, which had pledged to dam the transfer through the two-day EU summit, absented from the vote. Regardless of that win for Ukraine, funding talks collapsed after Hungary’s prime minister vetoed a essential 50 billion euro ($55 billion) monetary bundle for Ukraine. Comply with live updates.

— CNBC’s Brian Evans, Hayden Discipline, Michael Wayland, Jordan Novet, Kif Leswing, Matt Clinch and Karen Gilchrist contributed to this report.

— Comply with broader market motion like a professional on CNBC Pro.