5 things to know before the stock market opens Tuesday

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

U.S. equity markets were primed for a positive open Tuesday, which would come as a relief after Friday’s brutal selloff and Monday’s declines. Oil futures, meanwhile, declined early Tuesday after Monday’s rally. Investors are looking for a path forward after Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s remarks Friday, in which he said the central bank would continue its aggressive rate hikes to put a lid on four-decade-high inflation. Fresh economic data is on the docket for Tuesday, including the Conference Board’s latest consumer confidence survey. High-profile names such as Best Buy, HP and CrowdStrike report earnings Tuesday, as well.

Best Buy beat Wall Street’s low expectations for sales and profit during its fiscal second quarter, as the big box electronics retailer suffered from lower consumer demand. People did plenty to stock up on electronics during the height of the pandemic, and surging inflation is driving shoppers to spend more on essentials such as gas and food. The company also stuck with its full-year guidance, which it had already cut in July. “As we entered the year, we expected the consumer electronics industry to be softer than last year following two years of elevated growth driven by unusually strong demand for technology products and services and fueled partly by stimulus dollars,” CEO Corie Barry said in the company’s earnings release, adding that the retailer and its cohorts are facing additional economic pressures.

Sony, the maker of the PlayStation family of consoles, is pushing into mobile gaming. The Japanese electronics and entertainment giant is in a tough spot with its gaming business. The demand that drove sales during the height of Covid lockdowns has dried up as people head back out to the office, restaurants and vacation spots. Sony is also struggling to meet demand for its PlayStation 5 console due to supply chain issues. The PlayStation mobile gaming unit will operate independently from the console business, the company said.

Ukraine has started a counteroffensive against Russian forces in the southern part of the nation, and it appears the Ukrainian military might have scored some early success. A spokesperson for Ukraine’s forces in the South told NBC News that some Russian forces have started to retreat. The news came as British intelligence said Russian forces in that region, particularly those in and around the city of Kherson, could be shorthanded and disorganized. “The occupiers must know: We will chase them to the border. To our border, which line has not been changed,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an address Monday night. Read Ukraine war updates here.

The Greenland ice sheet, the second biggest in the world, covers 80% of the island. New research says 3.3% of it will melt by 2100, leading to a sea-level increase of 10 inches. This will happen regardless of whatever actions humanity takes to battle climate change, scientists said. The forecast is more than twice as much as scientists have previously predicted from Greenland’s ice sheet. Rising sea levels threaten hundreds of millions of people and trillions of dollars in economic output in the United States and elsewhere.

— CNBC’s Jesse Pound, Arjun Kharpal, Melissa Repko, Holly Ellyatt and Emma Newburger contributed to this report.

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