U.S. stock index futures dropped more than 1% on Wednesday amid concerns about a banking crisis.
Wholesale prices posted an unexpected decline in February, providing some encouraging news on inflation as the Federal Reserve weighs its next move on interest rates.
The producer price index fell 0.1% for the month, against the Dow Jones estimate for a 0.3% increase and compared to a 0.3% gain in January. On a 12-month basis, the index increased 4.6%, well below the downwardly revised 5.7% level from the previous month.
Market Snapshot
At 8:36 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were down 601 points, or 1.85%, S&P 500 e-minis were down 71.25 points, or 1.80%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 167 points, or 1.35%.
Pre-Market Movers
Credit Suisse— Shares of Credit Suisse were down 27% after the firm’s biggest backer, Saudi National Bank,said it won’t provide it with further financial help. Credit Suisse and several other European banks, includingSociete Generale, Italy’sMonte dei PaschiandUniCredit, werehalted from tradingas prices plummeted.
Bank of America,Morgan Stanley,Wells Fargo— Shares of larger financials were in lower early Wednesday as the Credit Suisse tumble sent ripples across the global banking sector. Bank of America lost 2.9%, Morgan Stanley dropped 3.2% and Wells Fargo declined by nearly 4.2%.
Lennar— Shares of the homebuilder rose more than 1% in premarket trading after Lennar beat estimates on the top and bottom lines for its fiscal first quarter. Lennar reported $2.06 in earnings per share on $6.49 billion of revenue. Analysts surveyed by Refinitiv expected $1.55 in earnings per share on $5.93 billion of revenue. Home deliveries increase 9% year over year, but gross margin and new orders decreased.
PacWest Bancorp,Comerica,KeyCorp— Several regional banks led Wednesday’s fell after rallying on Tuesday. PacWest and Comerica lost 7.7% and 3.4%, respectively. KeyCorp’s stock price dropped 1.4%,Regions Financialwas down 4.2% andZions Bancorplost 5.5%. Shares of San Francisco-based First Republic bucked the trend, gaining 3.8%.
Royal Caribbean— Shares of the cruise line were down 2.8%. The company recently refunded guests after mistakenly offering a non-existent ‘Premier Pass’ on its website. The company also announced it would be expanding its sales team. Rival cruise operators were also down.
Market News
Credit Suisse Top Shareholder Rules Out More Assistance to Bank
Credit Suisse Group AG’s top shareholder ruled out providing more financial assistance to the struggling Swiss bank, citing regulatory issues.
“The answer is absolutely not, for many reasons outside the simplest reason which is regulatory and statutory,” Saudi National Bank Chairman Ammar Al Khudairy said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Wednesday when asked if the lender was open to assisting Credit Suisse if there was another call for additional liquidity.
First Republic Spoke to Private Equity before Securing Financing -Sources
First Republic Bank spoke to at least one private equity firm about raising capital before it secured financing from JPMorgan Chase & Co and U.S. authorities intervened with support for the industry, two sources familiar with the matter said.
The conversations, which have not been previously reported, shed new light on the frenzied activity that took place over the weekend after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, as other lenders under pressure looked for ways to restore investor confidence.
Microsoft-Backed OpenAI Starts Release Of Powerful AI Known As GPT-4
The startup OpenAI on Tuesday said it is beginning to release a powerful artificial intelligence model known as GPT-4, setting the stage for human-like technology to proliferate and more competition between its backer Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google.
OpenAI, which created the chatbot sensation ChatGPT, said in a blog post that its latest technology is “multimodal,” meaning images as well as text prompts can spur it to generate content.
Moody's Downgrades Signature Bank To Junk, Places Six U.S. Banks Under Review
Ratings agency Moody's on Monday downgraded the debt ratings of collapsed New York-based Signature Bank deep into junk territory and placed the ratings of six other U.S. banks under review for a downgrade.
Moody's, which rated Signature Bank's subordinate debt 'C', said it was also withdrawing future ratings for the collapsed bank.