U.S. markets are pointing lower before the opening bell as the optimism that seemed kicked off the new year fades.<\/p>\n
Futures for the S&P 500 declined 0.2% Thursday, while Dow Jones Industrial Average futures lost 0.4%. Nasdaq futures were off 0.3% before the bell. <\/p>\n
Military contractors are the fastest rising stocks on the S&P after President Donald Trump<\/a> on Wednesday proposed raising U.S. military spending by 67% to $1.5 trillion in 2027, citing \u201ctroubled and dangerous times.\u201d The 2026 military budget is $901 billion.<\/a><\/p>\n Shares of RTX rose 4.8% during off hours trading, while Northrop Grumman jumped 8.5% and General Dynamics climbed 6.2%.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s comments came just days after a U.S. military operation captured Venezuelan leader Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a> and brought him to the U.S. to face drug trafficking charges. U.S. forces continue to mass in the Caribbean Sea. <\/p>\n Trump in recent days has also called for taking over the Danish territory of Greenland<\/a> for national security reasons and has suggested he\u2019s open to carrying out military operations in Colombia. <\/p>\n Shares of Angi rose nearly 3% after the online home services company announced it was laying off about 12% of its workforce citing, in part, efficiencies driven by artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, at midday in Europe, Britain\u2019s FTSE 100 fell 0.3%, while the CAC 40 in Paris lost 0.2% and Germany\u2019s DAX dropped 0.1%.<\/p>\n Tokyo\u2019s Nikkei 225 dropped 1.6% on Thursday to 51,117.26, with technology stocks among those leading the decline. SoftBank, which focuses on tech investments, dropped 7.6%, while semiconductor equipment maker Tokyo Electron dipped 4%.<\/p>\n Hong Kong\u2019s benchmark Hang Seng lost 1.2% to 26,149.31, although shares of OpenAI\u2019s Chinese rival Zhipu rose as much as around 15% above their offer price in the company\u2019s trading debut.<\/p>\n The Shanghai Composite index fell nearly 0.1% to 4,082.98.<\/p>\n South Korea\u2019s Kospi, which reached record high levels this week, mostly flatlined Thursday, adding less than 0.1% to 4,552.37.<\/p>\n In Australia, the S&P\/ASX 200 added 0.3% to 8,720.80, while Taiwan\u2019s Taiex slid more than 0.2%.<\/p>\n Oil prices rose Thursday after the U.S. seized two oil tankers as Trump\u2019s administration sought to assert control over Venezuelan oil<\/a>. That also followed Trump\u2019s earlier remarks that Venezuela would provide 30 million to 50 million barrels of oil<\/a> to the U.S.<\/p>\n Benchmark U.S. crude rose 85 cents to $56.85 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, also rose 85 cents, to $60.81 per barrel.<\/p>\n Later Thursday morning, the Labor Department will release its weekly report on U.S. layoffs, with its monthly job report for December scheduled for release on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. markets are pointing lower before the opening bell as the optimism that seemed kicked off the new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[9178,28,27459,12,101,7905,18015,793,7261,1931,1929,6377,4763,22997,12302,11158,65222,795,792,800,965],"class_list":["post-395201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-aerospace-and-defense-industry","tag-business","tag-colombia","tag-donald-trump","tag-economy","tag-financial-markets","tag-general-dynamics-corp","tag-general-news","tag-greenland","tag-jobs-and-careers","tag-labor","tag-national","tag-northrop-grumman-corp","tag-openai-inc","tag-softbank-corp","tag-stocks-and-bonds","tag-tokyo-electron-ltd","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states-government","tag-washington-news","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}