10 things you need to know before the opening bell

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10 things you need to know before the opening bell

amazon hq2 new york protest

Bebeto Matthews/AP

New York City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, center, speaks during a conference in Gordon Triangle Park in the Queens borough of New York, following Amazon's announcement it would abandon its proposed headquarters for the area, Thursday Feb. 14, 2019.

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Here is what you need to know.

  1. Amazon cancels its planned HQ2 in New York City. The tech giant had announced it would bring 25,000 jobs to a campus in Queens' Long Island City neighborhood. Local opposition quickly arose about the company's decision to accept up to $3 billion in tax breaks.
  2. Congress has passed a border security compromise to avert another government shutdown. President Donald Trump will also declare a national emergency to boost funding for physical barriers along the US-Mexico border.
  3. British Prime Minister Theresa May suffers a new Brexit defeat. Members of Parliament voted Thursday to reject a motion seeking endorsement of her plan to renegotiate the controversial backstop for Northern Ireland.
  4. Warren Buffett's Berkshire trims his giant stake in Apple. A regulatory filing late Thursday showed that the stake fell 1% to 249.6 million shares in the three months to December 31 2018, down from 252.5 million in the previous three months.
  5. US retail sales collapsed by the most since 2009 in December. Sales sank 1.2% to $505.8 billion, the Commerce Department said, raising suspicion among some economists that the data will eventually be revised higher.
  6. Deere missed expectations for first-quarter profits and cited trade policies as factor. Shares of the world's largest maker of tractors fell 4% pre-market.
  7. Nvidia topped earnings and sales expectations, sending shares up 5.7% pre-market. Last month, the company lowered its guidance for the fourth quarter, citing weak macroeconomic conditions in China.
  8. Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is quietly building a new food-delivery service. CloudKitchens, one of the units of Kalanick's company City Storage Systems, has hired dozens of people including former Uber employees.
  9. US stock futures indicate a higher open. Dow futures are up 64 points, or 0.25%, and S&P 500 futures are up 18 points, or 0.25%.
  10. Economic data is on deck. Industrial production and capacity utilization numbers for January will cross at 9:15 a.m. ET, and the University of Michigan's preliminary consumer-sentiment survey for February is due at 10 a.m.
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