The S&P 500 (^GSPC) was up more than 0.1% while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) added 0.25%, or about 100 points. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) closed just below the flat line.

Meanwhile, the 10-year Treasury yield (^TNX) hovered at 4.7% ahead of a crucial December jobs report set for release on Friday morning.

Markets will be closed leading into jobs day for a national day of mourning for former President Jimmy Carter on Thursday.

Edison International (EIX) stock fell as much as 13% Wednesday after the company shut off power to tens of thousands of customers in Southern California as wildfires raged through the region.

As of Wednesday afternoon, 69,601 customers of Southern California Edison — Edison International’s subsidiary serving the region — were affected by outages, according to the company’s tracker. A separate tracker, poweroutage.us, put the total number of outages across the state much higher, estimating that roughly 400,000 Californians were without power.

At least two people were killed as four separate fires spanning thousands of acres tore through Los Angeles County Wednesday, and local firefighters said they were not equipped to mitigate blazes of such magnitude.

Read the full story here.

The US dollar (DX=F, DX-Y.NYB) extended its rebound on Wednesday, adding to gains after the currency was on track for a one-week low following a report from the Washington Post on Monday that suggested President-elect Donald Trump won't commit to an aggressive tariff plan.

But just two days later, CNN reported Trump could declare a national economic emergency to enact universal tariffs, pushing the dollar even higher as equities faltered.

The US dollar "is priced to perfection," Bank of America's global rates and currencies research team, led by FX analyst Athanasios Vamvakidis, wrote in a note published on Wednesday. "The USD has rallied strongly since the US election, from an already high level."

The currency's price action has largely been driven by two main catalysts: Trump's election and the subsequent Republican sweep, along with the recalibration of future Fed easing in the face of strong economic data.

"American exceptionalism in terms of better economic growth, faster productivity growth, superior equity market performance, and higher yields all act as a collective magnet for attracting capital to the United States," wrote Blake Millard, director of investments at Sandbox Financial Partners.

Even data that's often viewed as not so good, like sticky pricing pressures and inflation headwinds, can be positive for the dollar.

"With the Federal Reserve expected to cut rates less than most other major central banks, expected interest rate differentials favor the greenback," Millard wrote. "Also, tariffs will restrict the flow of goods leading to fewer dollars going abroad and reducing the demand for foreign currency."

And with most economists in agreement that Trump's proposed tariff plans will lead to higher inflation over time, the cycle surrounding bullish dollar sentiment remains intact.

Read more about where the dollar could be heading here.

Mobileye (MBLY) stock dropped 14% Wednesday as the self-driving technology maker’s presentation at the tech industry’s annual CES trade show in Las Vegas failed to impress investors.

The company, which was spun off by the struggling chip giant Intel (INTC) in 2022, is now down 45% from last year. Mobileye scored a deal with Lyft (LYFT) in Nov. 2024 in the ride-hailing app’s push to bring self-driving taxis to its platform.

Meanwhile, competition in the autonomous vehicle technology space is heating up.

Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang put the company’s software tools and chips for self-driving cars at the forefront of his CES keynote, saying that "The AV revolution has arrived."

"I predict that this will likely be the first multi-trillion-dollar robotics industry," he added. Nvidia announced partnerships with other Mobileye rivals Aurora Innovation (AUR) and Continental as well as Toyota (TM) and Uber (UBER).

While Aurora shares initially soared 30% on the news Tuesday, the stock dropped 8% Wednesday. Nvidia fell 6% Tuesday after hitting a record close to start the week. The chipmaker traded sideways Wednesday.

Qualcomm (QCOM) also highlighted its autonomous driving tech strategy at CES.

The Federal Reserve opted to cut interest rates by 25 basis points at its final meeting of 2024 in December. The minutes from that meeting, released on Wednesday, revealed that "many" Fed officials supported a gradual pace of interest rate cuts in 2025.

"Many participants suggested that a variety of factors underlined the need for a careful approach to monetary policy decisions over coming quarters," the minutes read. "These factors included recent elevated inflation readings, the continuing strength of spending, reduced downside risks to the outlook for the labor market and economic activity, and increased upside risks to the outlook for inflation."

Participants largely expected inflation would continue to move toward its 2% target but noted that "recent higher-than-expected readings on inflation, and the effects of potential changes in trade and immigration policy, suggested that the process could take longer than previously anticipated."

There's been increasing debate on Wall Street about when, or if, the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates in 2025.

Evercore ISI vice chairman Krishna Guha's base case is for the Fed to cut twice this year. But in a note to clients on Wednesday he provided a clear example of why the Fed could not cut interest rates at all this year.

"Bumpier inflation data, some renewed strength in the labor market plus more max-reflationary Trump actions lead the Fed to raise its inflation forecast more in March, and skip a March cut," Guha wrote.

From there, there is no growth shock for the US economy and unemployment stabilizes or falls. Tariffs or wage-growth led inflation worries would then come back into view too.

"As of June the Fed judges that the economy does not need cuts to maintain a healthy labor market, and with policy plausibly not far from short-run neutral, and actual inflation set to move higher in 2H under tariff and immigration policy shocks and tax cuts ahead, decides to simply stay on hold and police the passthrough of these shocks, even though much of the inflation is in principle a onetime price level shock, in light of recent years’ experience," Guha said of this scenario.

He added, "Fed officials might well anticipate that they might cut a bit more in 2026, but the market would likely price the end of the cycle, and the first hike 12 to 18 months after the last cut – so around the start of 2026."

New economic data showed showed hiring in the US labor market continues to slow, but layoffs remain low.

Data from ADP Wednesday morning showed 122,000 private payrolls were added in December, down from the 144,000 additions seen in November.

Meanwhile, the latest reading of initial jobless claims from the Department of Labor showed 201,000 claims for unemployment benefits were filed in the week ending Jan. 4, a drop of 10,000 from the previous week and below the 215,000 expected by economists.

ADP chief economist Nela Richardson told Yahoo Finance that a low number of layoffs remains key to why the labor market is "stable" for now.

"That's precisely why [we saw] stability in the 2024 labor market," Richardson said. "You had low layoffs, low quits."

Read more here on the state of the labor market.

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) extended losses for a second day as the world's largest cryptocurrency hovering just below the $94,000 level.

The token fell more than 3.5% over the past 24 hours amid a broader market sell-off over worries of tariffs from the incoming Trump administration along with the prospect of a slower rate cut policy by the Federal Reserve if inflation remains sticky.

Bitcoin had surged to above $102,000 on Monday before rapidly declining on Tuesday. The token continued to fall on Wednesday as the markets remained on edge over Trump's tariff policy.

EBay stock (EBAY) rose 11% on Wednesday after Meta (META) announced it will test listings from the e-commerce platform on Facebook Marketplace in the US, Germany, and France.

Meta's announcement comes after the European Commission fined the company in November for breaching antitrust rules by tying Marketplace to its personal social network Facebook.

"While we disagree with and continue to appeal the European Commission’s decision on Facebook Marketplace, we are working quickly and constructively to build a solution which addresses the points raised," Meta wrote in a blog post Wednesday.

"Today, we will launch a test in Germany, France, and the US that will enable buyers to browse listings from eBay directly on Facebook Marketplace while completing their transaction on eBay. This could benefit people using both platforms," said the post.

Meta shares were down roughly 1% on Wednesday.

Quantum computing-related stocks took a hit on Wednesday after Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang suggested the computing technology is probably two decades away.

During a question-answer session with analysts on Tuesday, Huang said, “If you kind of said 15 years for very useful quantum computers, that would probably be on the early side. If you said 30, it’s probably on the late side."

"If you picked 20, I think a whole bunch of us would believe it," he added.

On Wednesday, Rigetti Computing (RGTI), IonQ (IONQ), and D-Wave Quantum (QBTS) all fell more than 40%.

The quantum computing-related stocks were among the top trending tickers on Yahoo Finance's platform on Wednesday.

Walmart (WMT) CEO Doug McMillon sat down with President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday, sources told Yahoo Finance.

The one-on-one meeting at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate comes less than two weeks before he takes office for the second time.

“Doug enjoyed reconnecting with President Trump on a range of topics," a Walmart spokesperson said, adding that it was a "great conversation."

McMillon served on one of Trump's advisory councils before it was disbanded in August 2017, then on a special task force in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020.

The possibility of tariff hikes remain a top issue for retail giant Walmart. Trump has floated a range of new measures, such as an 10% tariff on all imports and 60% levies on Chinese imports, in a bid to lower the trade deficit.

Such tariffs could hit the retail chain's profit thanks to an elevation in costs. Walmart might have pass along that cost to consumers who are healthy, but price sensitive, heading into 2025.

Read more here.

Yahoo Finance's Jennifer Schonberger reports:

Federal Reserve governor Chris Waller said Wednesday that he still supports cutting interest rates this year, believing inflation will continue to drift lower despite promises of sweeping tariffs from the new Trump administration.

"I believe that inflation will continue to make progress toward our 2% goal over the medium term and that further reductions will be appropriate," Waller said during a speech in Paris.

While Waller underscored that tariff proposals raise the possibility of a "new source of upward pressure on inflation," he noted projections of their economic impact vary widely.

Read more here.

Yahoo Finance's Laura Bratton reports:

Moderna stock (MRNA) has seen big swings this week after the first reported bird flu death in the US, which has put its development of a vaccine in focus.

The stock jumped over 10% on Tuesday before reversing course and losing over 5% early Wednesday.

In July 2024, Moderna was awarded $176 million from the US government to advance the development of its mRNA H5N1 (bird flu) vaccine, which is in the early stages of testing. The award came after an outbreak of the virus in cows infected three dairy workers, prompting concerns of an outbreak in humans.

Read more here.

Stocks wobbled at the open on Wednesday as investors assessed a news report that President-elect Donald Trump is considering declaring a national economic emergency.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) was little changed, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) fell to just below the flat line. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) was also broadly flat, after volatile premarket trading.

Investors are on edge over the prospect of slower interest rate cuts this year if inflation remains sticky.

Meanwhile, Federal Reserve governor Chris Waller said he still supports cutting interest rates this year. He believes inflation will continue to drift lower, despite promises of sweeping tariffs from the new Trump administration.

A CNN report on Wednesday morning said Trump is looking to the emergency powers to provide a legal basis for his proposed hefty and wide-ranging tariffs.

Another day, another report suggesting President-elect Donald Trump will look for creative solutions to impose broad tariffs on America's trading partners.

CNN's Kayla Tausche reported early Wednesday that Trump "is considering declaring a national economic emergency to provide legal justification for a large swath of universal tariffs on allies and adversaries."

Following the report, stock futures pared gains and traded into negative territory.

About an hour before the market open, futures were little changed.

Wednesday's market reaction is the inverse of what investors saw Monday when a report from the Washington Post suggested Trump may look to narrow the scope of his tariff proposals. After markets cheered that story, the president-elect denied it.

But the back-and-forth seen in the major stock indexes on Trump's tariff bluster continues to play second fiddle to the most important factor for investors right now: the Federal Reserve.

Tuesday's sell-off is the latest case in point.

Inflation data inside the ISM's latest manufacturing PMI report, coupled with job openings data that showed an uptick in labor demand during November, saw markets price out another 0.25% rate cut from the Fedin 2025.

In turn, the Nasdaq fell almost 2% with stalwarts like Nvidia (NVDA) losing 6% after reaching an all-time high earlier in the session.

As Trump's inauguration approaches, investors and newshounds will see many echoes of the run-up to his 2017 inauguration in recent newsflow — everything is on the table: renaming bodies of water, annexing Greenland, and so on.

Because markets don't jump to price in the maximum risk posed by every Trump proposal doesn't mean they don't matter.

But the Fed meets times a year to vote on monetary policy, and interest rates are the most important driver of stock prices over the long term.

US stocks closed in a sea of red on Tuesday as traders recalibrated Fed rate cut bets following a string of mixed economic data and concerns over an uptick in inflation.

Big Tech led the declines with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) shedding roughly 1.9%, dragged down by shares of Nvidia (NVDA), which lost over 6%.

The benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC) fell over 1.1% while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) ended the session down about 0.4%.

Meanwhile, the 10-year Treasury yield (^TNX) added roughly 7 basis points to hover just below 4.7%.

Job openings rose more than economists expected in November, but other signs of cooling in the labor market have persisted as fewer Americans left their jobs and hiring continued to slow.

On Tuesday, the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) showed 5.27 million hires were made during the month, down from the 5.39 million made during October. The hiring rate fell to 3.3% from the 3.4% seen in October. Also in Tuesday's report, the quits rate, a sign of confidence among workers, fell to 1.9% from 2.1% in October.

Both the quits rate and hiring rate are now lower than they were before pandemic. Oxford Economics lead US economist Nancy Vanden Houten described Tuesday's release as consistent with a "no hire, no fire" labor market.

Largely, this is seen as an OK scenario for the Federal Reserve's maximum employment mandate, as long as conditions don't worsen. In December, Fed Chair Jerome Powell described the labor market as "looser than pre-pandemic" but also noted that, for now, the labor market is cooling in a "gradual and orderly way."

The key question remains whether things can stay in this state if the Fed holds interest rates steady over the next several months or if more softness emerges, prompting a rate move from the central bank.

"We don’t think we need further cooling in the labor market to get inflation down to 2%," Powell said.

Trump made quite a few eyebrow-raising comments over the past few days, from suggesting Canada could become the 51st US state to implying military force could be used to acquire the Panama Canal and Greenland.

But one strategist told Yahoo Finance not to pay too much attention to the president-elect's policies or rhetoric. At least not yet.

"Trump's approach is very simple in a lot of ways," Michael Arone, chief investment strategist at State Street Global Advisors, told Yahoo Finance's Market Domination. "There are a lot of outlandish comments and objectives that will largely go by the wayside."

Arone noted that while Trump will likely attempt to tackle or make progress on most of his campaign promises, like tax cuts for corporations and curbs on immigration, much of his rhetoric will likely be used as a bargaining chip or a starting point to negotiate something better.

"Look at what already happened this week with tariffs," he said, referring to a Washington Post report from earlier this week that said Trump's team is now exploring more limited tariffs than anticipated.

"We've seen this movie before," he said. "That's why investors are too obsessed with all the outcomes on this."

Yahoo Finance's Jennifer Schonberger reports:

The surprise departure of Federal Reserve vice chair for supervision Michael Barr is focusing new attention on Michelle Bowman, named by analysts as the person most likely to become the Fed’s new top banking cop.

The conservative Fed governor and former state banking commissioner of Kansas "seems like the likely choice," Stifel chief Washington policy strategist Brian Gardner said in a note Monday.

Bowman "is the logical candidate," added TD Cowen’s Jaret Seiberg in a separate note.

What helps Bowman's chances, according to analysts, is that there currently is no empty seat on the Fed's board of governors for Trump to fill with an outsider. Barr said he will remain as a Fed governor until his term is up in 2032.

So Trump either has to leave the Fed vice chair for supervision position empty until Fed governor Adriana Kugler's term expires Jan. 31, 2026, or nominate an existing Fed governor to the post. Bowman would fit that qualification.

Bowman, if selected, could take the regulation of the nation’s largest banks in a new direction.

Read more here.

Meta shares fell nearly 2% on Tuesday after CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced an end to the company's third-party fact-checking program.

Originally designed to curb misinformation, the program will now be replaced by a user-driven model similar to X's Community Notes.

"We are going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms," Zuckerberg said in a video posted by the company. "Fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they have created, especially in the US."

“We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”

As Yahoo Finance's Hamza Shaban reports, the move highlights intersecting shifts in media, technology, and politics as the Biden era comes to an end. Meta is responding to competition from X as popular platforms continue to shun traditional media and as tech industry executives attempt to win favor under a second Trump administration.

Shares of AI software firm Palantir Technologies fell more than 6% after Morgan Stanley reinstated coverage of the company with an Underweight rating.

Morgan Stanley analyst Sanjit Singh set his 12-month price target for the stock at $60, implying shares could drop another 15% on top of Tuesday's decline.

Even with Tuesday's drop Palantir shares have rallied over 340% over the past year, fueled by a broader boom in artificial intelligence and the US government’s growing interest in AI war technologies. The stock was added to the S&P 500 in September.

Its most recent quarterly earnings surpassed expectations thanks to higher-than-anticipated spending from the US government on its AI tech.

Palantir is led by oft-controversial CEO Alex Karp and was co-founded by conservative tech mogul Peter Thiel. The firm has at times faced backlash for its partnerships with government agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) dropped below the critical $100,000 mark on Tuesday, echoing broader market losses as better-than-expected economic data sparked fears of an inflation resurgence.

In mid-afternoon trade, the largest cryptocurrency traded around $97,000 a token after prices on Monday topped $100,000 for the first time since Dec. 19.

Smaller cryptocurrencies like ethereum (ETH-USD) dropped 7% to trade above $3,400 a coin.

Vaccine makers' stocks rose Tuesday following the first reported bird flu death in the US as well as an uptick in COVID-19 cases, per CDC data.

Moderna (MRNA) surged nearly 12%. Moderna in July 2024 was awarded $176 million from the US government to advance the development of its mRNA H5N1 (bird flu) vaccine, which is in early stages of testing.

Pfizer (PFE) is also developing an mRNA vaccine for H5N1. Shares of the company rose a more modest 1.4% midday Tuesday. Its partner on a COVID-19 vaccine, BioNTech (BNTX), rose over 5%.

Meanwhile, German biotech firm CureVac (CVAC) rose 5.9%. CureVac is developing an mRNA bird flu shot in collaboration with Indian pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline (GLAXO.BO), which was up a little more than 1%.

Also amid the COVID-19 uptick, vaccine maker Novavax (NVAX) rose over 10%.

The US dollar (DX=F, DX-Y.NYB) pushed higher on Tuesday, rebounding after the currency was on track for a one-week low following reports President-elect Donald Trump won't commit to an aggressive tariff plan.

“The dollar has swung to a gain today after the ISM services (54.1) and job openings (8.1M) strongly beat expectations in December, leading markets to roll back their expectations for Federal Reserve easing this year to only 33 basis points," Kyle Chapman, FX markets analyst at Ballinger Group, wrote in an email.

“There are two main points leading the dollar higher. The first is a rebound in labor demand reflected in the strong rise in job openings, and the second is the strongest ISM prices paid index since February 2023," he said.

Prices paid in the services sector jumped to a nearly two-year high, suggesting the inflation fight is not yet finished. Following the data's release, traders scaled back rate cut bets, placing a less than 50% chance the central bank cuts rates ahead of its June meeting, per the CME FedWatch Tool.

"It is certainly too early to call a reacceleration in inflation from this round of data, and markets will take the bigger clues from non-farms on Friday," Chapman said. "With the market now firmly biased towards only a single rate cut this year, for me the room is only growing for a pullback in the overstretched hawkish repricing of the Fed path.”

President-elect Donald Trump announced a new multibillion-dollar foreign investment to build new data centers across the United States as interest and exploration of artificial intelligence intensifies.

Trump revealed on Tuesday that Damac Group, based in Dubai and backed by billionaire developer Hussain Sajwani, will invest $20 billion into the build-out.

"They feel so strongly about the country that they want to let people know about it," the president-elect said during a press briefing at Mar-a-Lago. "It's an honor to have such a great investor."

Trump said the investment will be used to create "massive new data centers" across the Midwest and Sunbelt regions "and keep America on the cutting edge of technology and artificial intelligence."

The project's first phase will begin in a handful of states, including Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Michigan, and Indiana, among others.

Prices paid in the services sector during December shot higher, casting concern over the path forward for inflation.

Data from the Institute of Supply Management showed the prices paid index jumped to a reading of 64.4 in December, up from 58.2 the month prior. Broadly, activity in the sector also increased with the ISM services index rising to 54.1 in December from 53.5 in November.

"The surge in the prices paid index to a nearly two-year high of 64.4, from 58.2, is a worry for the Fed as it is consistent with PCE supercore inflation remaining at 3.5% until the middle of next year," Capital Economics North America economist Thomas Ryan wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday. "This serves as a good reminder that the Fed's fight against inflation is not over, particularly going into a year where tariffs and immigration curbs are set to reignite price pressures."

The 10-year Treasury yield (^TNX) quickly moved higher after the release, adding roughly 7 basis points to hover just below 4.7%. And bets on when the Federal Reserve will next cut interest rates were pushed back too.

Traders now see a less than 50% chance the Fed cuts rates before the central bank's June meeting, per the CME FedWatch Tool. Yesterday, traders saw a roughly 55% chance the Fed will have cut interest rates by at least 25 basis points by the end of its May meeting.

Markets sold off as rates chugged higher. The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC), which opened the day in the green, was down about 1%. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 (^GSPC), which had also been positive earlier in the session, fell about 0.4%

Job openings rose more than expected in November as investors continue to dissect the pace of the labor market slowdown amid questions over how much further the Federal Reserve will slash interest rates this year.

New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Tuesday showed that 8.1 million jobs were open at the end of November, an increase from the 7.84 million in October.

The October figure was revised higher from the 7.74 million open jobs initially reported. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected Tuesday's report to show 7.74 million openings in November

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) also showed 5.27 million hires were made during the month, down from the 5.39 million made during October. The hiring rate fell to 3.3% from 3.4% in October. Also in Tuesday's report, the quits rate, a sign of confidence among workers, fell to 1.9% from 2.1% in October. Total quits decreased to 3.07 million from 3.28 million in October.

US stocks edged higher on Tuesday, with Nvidia (NVDA) once again lifting market sentiment.

The benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC) inched up 0.3%, holding near tech-fueled prior-session gains. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) also rose 0.3%, while those on the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) added around 0.2%.

Nvidia (NVDA) stock rose as much as 2.5% in premarket trading following CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote at the tech industry’s annual CES trade show in Las Vegas late Monday.

Huang's presentation gave a flurry of updates on upcoming Nvidia products that preview what’s next in the burgeoning artificial intelligence market and other emerging technologies.

Nvidia shares closed at a record high of $149.43 Monday ahead of Huang’s keynote — eclipsing its prior record close of $148.88 reached back on Nov. 7.

Read more here.