5 things to know before the stock market opens on Thursday

Happy Thursday. Stay tuned to CNBC tonight to watch Game 3 of the WNBA Playoffs between the Indiana Fever and Las Vegas Aces at 9pm ET.

S&P 500 futures are rising this morning on expectations that the index will rebound from a three-game losing streak.

Here are five important things investors need to know to start their trading day.

Wall Street has officially entered the final quarter of the calendar year, but it’s not heading into the final three months of 2026 with much momentum.

Here are the moves you need to know:

micron The company beat Wall Street expectations in both areas for its fiscal fourth quarter, reporting an 11x increase in data center revenue over the same period. The memory maker also provided better-than-expected guidance for the current quarter.

Despite the positive press, the stock fell slightly in pre-market trading. The stock has seen a monster rally of more than 500% over the past 12 months, benefiting from memory shortages brought on by the AI ​​boom.

Don’t miss CEO Sanjay Mehrotra on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” today at 9 a.m. ET. Watch live on CNBC or CNBC+.

Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari told CNBC’s Steve Reisman last night that inflation is “still too high” and that the labor market is “pretty good” but not “great.”

Kashkari’s comments came even though the PCE price index, the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, was softer than economists expected in August. The Fed official told Riesman that inflation “has been hovering around 3%,” and said of Wednesday’s report: “We did not expect today’s inflation numbers to change the story significantly.”

Speaking of the Fed: Yesterday, the central bank’s inspector general said that while there were management failures in renovating the Fed’s headquarters, he found no basis for criminal referral. Still, President Donald Trump called on former Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to resign from the central bank’s board in response to the report.

alphabet on Wednesday began rolling out Gemini 4 Argon, its most advanced AI model to date, to select cyber partners. As CNBC’s MacKenzie Sigalos and Samantha Subin write, the long-awaited release comes nearly a year after Gemini 3 helped improve the company’s standing in the AI ​​race.

Google’s parent company said Argon has set new records in real-world software engineering and tied for No. 1 in cybersecurity, and the company is already using the model internally to improve memory optimization in its data centers.

Speaking of data centers, Senate Democrats yesterday rejected a bill focused on data center energy prices, saying the bill didn’t go far enough. Sen. Josh Hawley also said that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman declined an invitation to testify at a Senate subcommittee hearing on the risks of runaway AI.

Eli Lilly announced yesterday that its combined obesity treatment improved weight loss compared to its best-selling drug, tirzepatide alone, in a mid-term trial. Lilly plans to begin Phase 3 trials at the end of this year.

The combination therapy combines Lilly’s experimental drug elolarintide with small amounts of tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Zepbound and Mounjaro. As CNBC’s Annika Kim Constantino reports, the trial results raise hopes for an alternative for patients who have not responded to currently available GLP-1 products.

Ken Custer, president of Lilly Cardiometabolic Health, said the combination therapy “could be a really effective approach.” Dr. Lilly expects to change the dosing regimen in the next phase of the trial.

—CNBC’s Liz Napolitano, Christopher Hayes, Spencer Kimball, Katie Tarasov, Kif Leswing, Steve Liesman, Matt Peterson, Jeff Cox, Samantha Subin, MacKenzie Sigalos, Justin Papp, Annika Kim Constantino and Kif Leswing contributed to this report.

Caleigh Keating helped produce this newsletter. Josephine Rozzelle edited this version.