Bitcoin, Bumble, Jack in the Box: What to Watch When the Stock Market Opens Today

Here’s what we’re watching ahead of Thursday’s opening bell.

• Inflation continues to send jitters through Wall Street. U.S. stock futures are down, suggesting the S&P 500 will extend a losing streak that pushed the gauge to its biggest three-day loss since October.
• Futures tied to the S&P 500 slipped 0.4% and those linked to the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 0.6%. Nasdaq-100 futures ticked down 0.3%, pointing to further losses for tech stocks. Read our full market wrap here.

What’s Coming Up

• Data on claims for unemployment benefits, a proxy for layoffs, are due at 8:30 a.m. Claims likely held near pandemic lows last week, a sign hiring is poised to strengthen when more workers return to the labor market.
• Earnings are due from

  Walt Disney,

  
  DIS -2.10%
  

  Airbnb,

  
  ABNB -1.74%
  

  Coinbase Global

  
  COIN -6.40%
  

  and

  DoorDash

  
  DASH -9.27%
  

  after markets close.

Market Movers to Watch

• Bitcoin’s dollar value fell 8.8% to $49,750 after

  Tesla

  
  TSLA -4.42%
  

  Chief Executive Elon Musk said the company has suspended accepting bitcoin as payment for its vehicles, citing concerns over its environmental impact. Tesla shares were down 1.6% premarket.

• Elsewhere in bad humor, Shiba Inu coin, a joke on a joke named for the dog breed that is the dogecoin’s mascot, fell more than 40% after the co-creator of the Ethereum network donated 50.7 trillion Shiba Inu coin, then worth about $1 billion, to a Covid-19 relief fund.
• Investors swiped left on

  Bumble

  
  BMBL -6.73%
  

  ‘s first-quarter earnings. Shares of the dating-app operator ticked down 0.5% ahead of the bell after sliding 6.7% Wednesday. With multiple public players now in the dating game, investors can afford to have high standards, writes Heard on the Street columnist Laura Forman.

• Jack in the Box

  
  JACK -4.35%
  

  dropped 3.8% premarket. The restaurant chain said same-store sales increased in the recent quarter and raised its dividend.

• L Brands

  
  LB -4.10%
  

  is up 2.6% ahead of the bell. The company earlier this week said it is spinning off lingerie chain Victoria’s Secret to existing shareholders, and yesterday some analysts raised their price targets for the stock.

• Essex Property Trust

  
  ESS -3.19%
  

  dropped 4% premarket. The apartment REIT declared its quarterly distributions after Wednesday’s close.

• Union Pacific

  
  UNP -2.03%
  

  ticked up 0.9% premarket. North American rail traffic rose more than 23% last week, marking a fifth straight week of gains topping 20%, data from the Association of American Railroads showed late Wednesday.

Market Facts

• Bank of America and

  JPMorgan

  
  JPM -0.69%
  

  Chase traded the first complex derivative using a Bloomberg index crafted to replace Libor, exchanging $250 million worth of an interest-rate swap earlier this month. The transaction marks a shift in efforts to move away from the troubled rate underpinning trillions of dollars in financial contracts.

• Bitcoin mining consumes about 148 terawatt-hours of energy annually, the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance estimates. That is more than Sweden uses in a year.
• On this day in 1999, Barbie went high-tech as Mattel acquired The Learning Co., a maker of educational software, for $3.51 billion. After only 16 months, Mattel sold The Learning Co. to Gores Technology Group for no cash up front, the assumption of The Learning Co.’s debt and an undisclosed percentage of its future profits. Mattel lost roughly $4 billion on the acquisition with nothing to show for it, making the deal one of the most disastrous in modern history.

Chart of the Day

• Cathie Wood’s ARK Investment Management LLC is bearing the brunt of the stock market’s faltering technology trade, again. Ms. Wood was crowned a star stock picker last year thanks to her exchange-traded funds’ hefty exposure to work-from-home winners.

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