Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq futures stall after tech’s biggest rally since May

Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) stock soared in premarket trading after the retailer beat earnings estimates and raised the lower end of its full-year sales and profit guidance.

Shares rose by over 18% in premarket trading, but the stock remains down 56% year to-date.

The company’s Hollister brand drove the results, posting a 15% year-over-year sales increase, which offset a 7% sales decline for Abercrombie.

Overall, the retailer reported earnings per share of $2.36, compared to analysts’ estimates of $2.16, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Net sales reached $1.29 billion, also above estimates for $1.27 billion.

The company raised the lower end of its full-year outlook for net sales growth to a range of 6% to 7%, while net income per diluted share is expected to come in at $10.20 to $10.50. Previously, the company saw net sales growing 5% to 7% and net income in a range of $10.00 to $10.50.

Read more live earnings coverage here.

Yahoo Finance’s Hamza Shaban reports:

Taken to its extreme, the grand promise of AI for the enterprise is running a business without employees.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) experiment brought this logic to the US government, a project run by the people for the people. The question DOGE asked was simple: How many people do you really need?

In the post-COVID era, executives leaned on euphemisms and “macroeconomic headwinds” as justifications for mass layoffs. The legacy of DOGE may see companies do away with that sort of contrived messaging.

DOGE opened the Overton window for any kind of manager — in the C-suite or in Washington — to perceive their workforce as too large. …

Recent layoffs at Amazon (AMZN), UPS (UPS), and Verizon (VZ) each came with their own company-specific reasons.

But the wave of corporate restructurings can be seen as part of a multiyear project — stretching back to Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter and now infused with the promise of AI-driven cost savings — that was further encouraged by the roughshod model of DOGE. Cut first, ask later.

Read more here in the takeaway from today’s Morning Brief.

Yahoo Finance’s Ines Ferré and David Hollerith report:

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) is struggling to gain momentum as it heads toward its worst month since June 2022.

As prices trade around $87,000 per token, or roughly 30% off their October all-time highs of more than $126,000, the cryptocurrency’s problems don’t appear to be easing.

And three key challenges for bitcoin have emerged as investors and strategists dig through the rubble of this month’s decline.

First, outflows of bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for November have reached $3.5 billion, their largest since February. “That indicates that institutional investors have stopped allocating into bitcoin,” 10X Research founder and CEO Markus Thielen said. “These ETFs have turned into sellers, and as long as they keep selling, I think the markets will struggle to stay up, or rebound,” he said.

Another issue: Thielen pointed to a slowdown in stablecoin minting activity, a warning that could suggest less capital is entering the crypto ecosystem. …

The third challenge facing bitcoin: Long-term holders had already been selling into the downturn, possibly in anticipation of the token’s historical four-year cycle.

Read more here on what’s behind bitcoin’s slump.

Bloomberg reports:

Read more here.