5 things to know before the stock market opens on Friday, April 8

Wall Street is set for a mixed open on Friday. US stock futures lost ground as the 10-year Treasury yield surged to a three-year high after the Federal Reserve indicated earlier in the week that more aggressive measures were needed to combat inflation. Tech stocks took the brunt of the accompanying surge in Treasury yields, sending the Nasdaq down more than 2.5% to Thursday’s close, on track to break a three-week winning streak. The S&P 500 was also tracking its first weekly loss in four weeks, down 1% from Monday to Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down nearly 0.7% for the week so far, which would be the second consecutive weekly loss. Next week, banks start their last quarterly earnings season.

The 10-year Treasury yield surged on Friday, surpassing the previous day’s high of 2.667% to March 2019 and keeping it above the two-year yield. They flipped last week for the first time since 2019. Another major treasury yield spread – 5y/30y – remained on either side on Friday inverted after flipping last week for the first time since 2006. The rollovers are important because historically they happened before recessions.

US oil prices rose slightly on Friday, but remained below $100 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude is down more than 3% so far this week after last week’s drop of nearly 13% as the United States announced its largest-ever release of Strategic Petroleum Reserve and International Energy Agency member nations joined efforts to combat high oil and gasoline prices. . .

A Russian missile attack on a railway station in eastern Ukraine on Friday killed more than 30 people and injured more than 100. The station was packed with evacuees waiting to travel to safer areas of the war-torn country. Ukrainian leaders have warned that fighting in the Donbass region, where Russia has been conducting military operations for years, is expected to resemble World War Two. Meanwhile, the Kremlin admitted that the Russian forces, not expecting to meet such stiff resistance, had suffered “significant losses” in their unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Twitter is planning to host a question-and-answer session with Elon Musk, the social network’s largest contributor and new board member, according to The Washington Post, citing internal company messages. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced the city council session in a company-wide email after a week of internal anger that an outspoken Tesla and SpaceX CEO would hurt company culture and make their jobs more difficult, The Post reports.

Musk, the world’s richest person, spoke Thursday night at the grand opening of a new $1.1 billion electric car plant near Austin Airport in Texas. The CEO said at the event that Tesla aims to manufacture 500,000 units of the Model Y in one year in Austin and the company also hopes to start production of the Cybertruck there next year. Two weeks ago, Musk opened a new factory for Tesla in Germany.