5 things to know before the stock market opens Thursday, August 8

Here are the most important news items that investors need to start their trading day:

Stocks closed in the red on Wednesday, failing to recover from Monday’s sell-off fully. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.60% to close at 38,763.45, while the S&P 500 moved 0.77% lower to close the session at 5,199.50. The Nasdaq Composite saw the largest percentage drop out of all the major indexes at 1.05%, finishing the session at 16,195.81. This comes after Tuesday’s session served as a bright spot for the markets, with the S&P and the Nasdaq moving 1% higher and the Dow adding almost 300 points. Follow live market updates.

Warner Bros. Discovery missed analyst estimates when it posted its quarterly results after the bell Wednesday. The company reported a loss of 36 cents per share on revenue of $9.7 billion, compared with a loss of 22 cents on $10.07 billion in revenue that analysts surveyed by LSEG were expecting. Warner Bros. Discovery also reported a $9.1 billion non-cash goodwill impairment charge in its TV networks segment, which the company said was caused by “the difference between market capitalization and book value, continued softness in the U.S. linear advertising market, and uncertainty related to affiliate and sports rights renewals, including the NBA.” Streaming, however, was a positive for the company in the period. Warner Bros. Discovery said it added 3.6 million subscribers, bringing the total number of global streaming customers to 103.3 million.

Customers aren’t the only ones pushing for lower prices. In the leadup to November’s election, politicians are now pledging to fight inflation, though they’re blaming it on different things. Vice President Kamala Harris, for instance, has said she’d tackle companies’ “price gouging,” while former President Donald Trump has taken aim at the Biden administration’s policies. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, have attacked companies for “shrinkflation,” the act of charging the same price for items while decreasing size. This comes as Walmart, McDonald’s and Kroger, among others, have found themselves in the middle of the high inflation debate, facing criticism over affordability.

A recession may still be afoot. According to JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, the odds of a “soft landing” for the U.S. economy are around 35% to 40%, meaning that he believes a recession is more likely. “There’s a lot of uncertainty out there,” he told CNBC’s Leslie Picker. “I’ve always pointed to geopolitics, housing, the deficits, the spending, the quantitative tightening, the elections, all these things cause some consternation in markets.” Dimon also said he’s “a little bit of a skeptic” when it comes to the Federal Reserve bringing inflation down to 2%. “I’m fully optimistic that if we have a mild recession, even a harder one, we would be okay,” he continued. “Of course, I’m very sympathetic to people who lose their jobs. You don’t want a hard landing.”

Apple’s advanced artificial intelligence features may come at a cost to customers. Analysts told CNBC that the company could charge users up to $20 for Apple Intelligence, which is planned to be released across some devices later this year. “Software and services makes it more lucrative for Apple to pass it on with the Apple One subscription model,” Neil Shah, Counterpoint Research partner, told CNBC in an interview last week. Meanwhile, Apple One costs users $19.95 per month for access to various services such as Apple Music. “The beauty of AI is as you use [it] more and more, it learns about you, and you get locked into the model itself because you can’t bring your own model from Apple to Android,” he continued.