5 things to know before the stock market opens Wednesday

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

The Nasdaq squeezed out another win Tuesday, while the S&P 500 slipped slightly. But it was a particularly rough day for the Dow as component Goldman Sachs fell more than 6% after posting its worst earnings miss in a decade. The big banks have reported mixed results, which has made it difficult to suss out what to expect as earnings season rolls on. “This is a really pivotal earnings season to find out whether or not companies can weather the storm and how long they can weather it for,” Liz Young of SoFi said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime.” On Wednesday, investors chew over more data, as the producer price index, a measure of wholesale inflation, comes out. Read live markets updates here.

It’s become a common theme for airlines: Airfares are high, but travelers keep paying up. United Airlines on Tuesday reported quarterly profit and revenue that easily beat Wall Street’s expectations, while outperforming its fourth quarter in 2019, just before the pandemic walloped travel. Carriers are still struggling with a labor shortage and a tighter supply of planes, not to mention higher fuel and materials costs, but people are eager to fly and that has trumped everything else. United sees the trend continuing, offering a stronger-than-expected outlook for early 2023.

Cash-strapped Twitter is practically looking for change in the couch cushions as it reportedly struggles to pay rent. Amid reports of dramatically lower ad revenue, the social media company is resorting to auctioning off items from its San Francisco headquarters. The company is selling kegerators, espresso machines, TVs, oversized neon versions of its logo, pizza ovens and more. CEO Elon Musk, who took over Twitter last fall, has faced an exodus of advertisers and employees as he has allowed banned users back on the platform while also seeking dramatic cost cuts.

Weekly mortgage demand shot up after rates came down a little bit, showing just how sensitive the market is to rate movement. Overall demand rose 28% last week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, as the interest rate on the popular 30-year fixed-rate mortgage declined to 6.23% from 6.42%. Granted, a year ago, the rate was 3.64%, and demand was much stronger for purchases and refinancing. New supply isn’t moving onto the market, either, so affordability will likely remain an issue for homebuyers for the immediate future.

More than a dozen people died in a helicopter crash Wednesday near Kyiv, including Ukraine’s interior minister, Denys Monastyrskyi, along with other top officials in his department. Several people on the ground and in the helicopter died in the town of Brovary. Three children were reportedly among the dead. The news comes as Ukraine’s war with Russia drags on, and as Russian President Vladimir Putin appears ready to announce another offensive. Read live war updates here.

– CNBC’s Sarah Min, Leslie Josephs, Jonathan Vanian, Diana Olick and Holly Ellyatt contributed to this report.

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