5 things to know before the stock market opens Friday, March 15
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average snapped a three-day winning streak on Thursday.
- Morgan Stanley named a head of firm-wide artificial intelligence.
- SpaceX’s towering Starship rocket completed several major milestones during its third test flight.
Here are the most important news items that investors need to start their trading day:
The Dow Jones Industrial Average snapped a three-day winning streak on Thursday. The 30-stock index fell more than 130 points on the back of hotter-than-expected inflation data, closing 0.35% lower on the day. The Dow is still up 0.47% on the week, though, on pace to reverse course after two weeks of losses. Other major indexes also fell Thursday: The Nasdaq Composite declined 0.3%, and the S&P 500 dipped 0.29%. Follow live market updates.
iStock Editorial | Getty Images
Morgan Stanley has named a head of firm-wide artificial intelligence. Jeff McMillan, who shepherded a project last year to introduce an AI solution for employees based on OpenAI’s GPT-4, will now coordinate AI implementation and governance across Morgan Stanley, CNBC’s Hugh Son reports. It’s the latest signal that Wall Street is thinking seriously — and cautiously — about the rise of artificial intelligence. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs have each identified in-house AI leads.
SpaceX’s next-generation Starship spacecraft, atop its powerful Super Heavy rocket, lifts off on its third launch from the company’s Boca Chica launchpad on an uncrewed test flight, near Brownsville, Texas, U.S. March 14, 2024.
Joe Skipper | Reuters
SpaceX’s towering Starship rocket completed several major milestones during its third test flight Thursday. The rocket, which had previously only flown for a total of about 11 minutes across two test flights, reached space and soared for roughly an hour. Starship fell short of its planned splashdown, breaking apart above the Indian Ocean, but the success marks a substantial step forward for Elon Musk’s space company as it works toward staggering launch capabilities.
Packages travel on a conveyor during Cyber Monday at the Amazon’s fulfillment center in Robbinsville, New Jersey, U.S., November 27, 2023.
Mike Segar | Reuters
Retailers are losing billions to organized refund fraud. CNBC’s Annie Palmer digs into how fraudsters trick companies like Amazon into refunding them for a purchase without physically returning an item. It’s become so pervasive that groups are marketing their services on social media sites like Reddit, TikTok and Telegram. The practice often takes advantage of lenient refund policies and can involve a conspirator from inside the retailer. Amazon says it works with law enforcement to dismantle the operations, and it’s sued alleged perpetrators of the schemes.
Bill and Melinda Gates brace the rain as they visit the township of Khayelitsha on October 25, 2019 in Cape Town, South Africa.
Brenton Geach | Gallo Images | Getty Images
A larger share of individual charitable giving is coming from the world’s wealthiest ranks, according to a new report from Altrata. In 2022, ultra-high-net-worth individuals (that’s anyone worth $30 million or more) accounted for 38% of that flow, according to the report. Just 400,000 people made up more than a third of the world’s charity. That concentration has implications for where donations are getting directed — the global wealthy have different priorities than other demographics, according to the report — and for how nonprofit heads are gearing their philanthropic outreach.
– CNBC’s Brian Evans, Lisa Kailai Han, Hugh Son, Michael Sheetz, Annie Palmer and Robert Frank contributed to this report.
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