10 things you need to know before the opening bell

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10 things you need to know before the opening bell

Riding horse through fire

AP/Felipe Dana

A man rides a horse through a bonfire as part of a ritual in honor of Saint Anthony the Abbot, the patron saint of domestic animals, in San Bartolome de Pinares, Spain.

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Here is what you need to know.

  1. Tesla is laying off 7% of its workforce. The electric-car maker will lay off more than 3,000 workers, according to an email from CEO Elon Musk sent to employees.
  2. Netflix slides after earnings. Shares were down about 2% early Friday after the streaming giant posted solid fourth-quarter subscriber growth and revenue of $4.19 billion, slightly missing the $4.21 billion that was expected by the Bloomberg consensus.
  3. Malaysia will forget about the Goldman Sachs 1MDB scandal for $7.5 billion. "An apology is just not sufficient. Not enough," Lim Guan Eng told reporters on Friday. "There must be the necessary reparations and compensations."
  4. Sears creditors are challenging Eddie Lampert's victory in buying the company out of bankruptcy. "ESL's current bid to 'save the Company' is nothing but the final fulfillment of a years-long scheme to deprive Sears and its creditors of assets and its employees of jobs while lining Lampert's and ESL's own pockets," the committee of unsecured creditors said in a filing.
  5. JB Hunt posts mixed results. The trucking company earned $0.81 a share on revenue of $2.32 billion, compared to the $1.21 a share and $2.32 billion that analysts surveyed by Bloomberg were expecting as its profit was impacted by a preannounced pretax charge of $134 million for contingent liabilities related to its ongoing arbitration with BNSF Railway.
  6. Japanese inflation slows. Japanese consumer prices, excluding fresh food, rose 0.7% in December, down from 0.9% the month prior.
  7. Bank of Jamaica is using reggae-inspired music videos to teach people about monetary policy. The videos explain the impacts of inflation and what the central bank is doing to combat it.
  8. Global markets are rallying. China's Shanghai Composite (+1.42%) led the gains in Asia and Britain's FTSE (+1.2%) was out front in Europe. The S&P 500 was set to open up 0.29% near 2,644.
  9. Earnings reporting is light. Schlumberger reports ahead of the opening bell.
  10. US economic data keeps coming. Industrial production and capacity utilization were both set to cross the wires at 9:15 a.m. ET and University of Michigan consumer confidence was due out at 10 a.m. ET. The US 10-year yield was up 1.6 basis points at 2.77%.
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