Pre-Markets Lower; Economic News Decent

Thursday, March 20, 2025We had bounced off early-morning lows in today’s pre-market trading, but it was very temporary and indexes look what looked like it may have been a hard turn lower. It’s not: things are now pretty steadily in the red. The Dow is -160 points at the hour, the S&P 500 is -23 points and the Nasdaq -120. The small-cap Russell 2000 is down a deeper percentage, -14 points.Fed day yesterday gave us a pretty decent rally, but market indexes have a ways to go to turn everything around, and market sentiment does not seem to have warmed back up much. Fed Chair Powell declared the economy fine still, with plenty of “unknown unknowns” (to quote Don Rumsfeld, not Powell) regarding tariff policy, among other things, in the near future. It was a ray of sunshine, with a “to be continued…” at the end of it. Weekly Jobless Claims Remain within Agreeable RangeThis Thursday morning’s Initial Jobless Claims keep the narrative that we continue to enjoy a healthy labor market in this country. As we’ve said for more than a year now, lots of the people we’re not seeing having lost their jobs took their pink slips straight to Retirement. That goes for the oldest Gen-Xers, too, by the way.Anyway, 223K new jobless claims filed last week is still an historically low number. It’s up slightly from the revised 221K from the previous week. It’s also roughly the mid-level going back to last fall, when one outlier +260K new jobless claims caused some tension regarding the labor market. Six months later: so far, so good.Continuing Claims bobbed up again to 1.892 million, from a downwardly revised 1.859 million the previous week. We’re again range-bound on these numbers, with the occasional (and often revised away later) 1.9 million print. When wee first climbed to these levels, the natural fear was that 2 million longer-term jobless claims can’t be far behind. So far, it has been.Philly Fed Keeps Positive for 2025The Philly Fed index for March came in at 12.5 this morning, higher than the 10.0 analysts were expecting and the 18.1 posted a month ago. After a rough patch of between the summer of 2022 and winter of last year, Philly Fed numbers have mostly gained traction. The months to come, like in so many other areas, will be key to this metric’s trajectory.Olive Garden Parent Company Misses Q3 EarningsDarden Restaurants DRI, the parent restauranteur of Olive Garden, Longhorn and also Ruth’s Chris Steakhouses, missed earnings by a penny in its just-reported Q3 report, to $2.80 per share. (This is still up from the $2.62 per share posted in the year-ago quarter.) Revenues of $3.16 billion missed the Zacks consensus $3.21 billion (but still up from $2.97 billion a year ago). This is the fourth miss in the last five quarters for Darden. Yet pre-market shares have shot up +6% on the news, as the company promises growth ahead with the recent acquisition of the Chuy’s franchise. For more on DRI’s earnings, click here.Check out the updated Zacks Earnings Calendar here.Questions or comments about this article and/or author? Click here>>Zacks Names #1 Semiconductor StockIt's only 1/9,000th the size of NVIDIA which skyrocketed more than +800% since we recommended it. NVIDIA is still strong, but our new top chip stock has much more room to boom.With strong earnings growth and an expanding customer base, it's positioned to feed the rampant demand for Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Internet of Things. Global semiconductor manufacturing is projected to explode from $452 billion in 2021 to $803 billion by 2028.See This Stock Now for Free >>Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Darden Restaurants, Inc. (DRI): Free Stock Analysis Report Invesco QQQ (QQQ): ETF Research Reports SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY): ETF Research Reports SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA): ETF Research ReportsThis article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).Zacks Investment ResearchWeiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Zacks Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Zacks