Continuing Claims Climb for a Second Week

Market Overview - Pre-market futures are showing positive movement with the Dow up 143 points, S&P 500 up 21 points, Nasdaq up 77 points, and Russell 2000 up 19 points [1] - The past five days of trading have been healthy, with the Dow up 4% and Russell 2000 up 7.9% since the start of 2026, although the tech-heavy Nasdaq remains slightly negative year to date [2] Jobless Claims - Initial Jobless Claims increased slightly to 227K last week, which is below the revised figure of 232K from the previous week, indicating a return to early December levels and a reasonably healthy labor market [3] - Continuing Claims rose for the second consecutive week to 1.862 million from 1.844 million, showing a reversion to normal levels after previously being above 1.9 million [4] Earnings Reports - Crocs (CROX) reported a strong Q4, beating earnings estimates by 19.3% with earnings of $2.29 per share on revenues of $957.64 million, leading to a 14.8% increase in shares [4] - TripAdvisor (TRIP) missed both earnings and revenue expectations, reporting earnings of $0.04 per share, which is 73% below the expected $0.15, and revenues of $411 million, which were 0.56% below projections, resulting in a further decline of 5% in shares [5] - Howmet (HWM) outperformed expectations in its Q4 report with earnings of $1.05 per share, exceeding the expected $0.97, and revenues of $2.16 billion, which surpassed expectations by 1.26% [6]