Russell Rallies As Rate Cut Bets Mount on Jobless Claims, Layoff Numbers; S&P and Nasdaq Run on Meta Layoff News

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Happy Thursday. This is TheStreet’s Stock Market Today for Dec. 4, 2025. You can follow the latest updates on the market here in our daily live blog.

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The bell tolls. The U.S. markets are now open. Stock futures, which were earlier seen flat, have tipped up a little bit: the Nasdaq (+0.20%) and S&P 500(+0.21%) are opening higher thanks to some news from Meta (+5.8%).

The tech giant is rocketing after floating plans for cuts in its ailing metaverse division, the very reason it changed its corporate name. It has been an enormous cash sink for the firm; maybe only dwarfed by its new, more expensive capital pursuit — artificial intelligence.

Meanwhile, the Dow (+0.18%) and Russell 2000 (-0.10%) are doing their own thing, with its components likely reacting to this morning’s jobless claims and layoffs report. Those were a mixed bag. For more on that, scroll down a little bit.

And on the continuous contract front, Natural Gas (-1.04% to $4.943), Brent (+0.32% to $62.87), Gold (+0.05% to $4,235.50), and Silver (-0.83% to $58.135) are sort of doing their own thing this morning.

Rounding out the morning trade, the 10Y Treasury is 2.5 tips higher at 4.083%, with just a few days left on the clock before the Fed’s highly-anticipated December meeting.

This morning, insurance software company Guidewire Software (+10.8%) and cloud provider Snowflake (-9.1%) are on opposite ends of the market — blame the never-ending earnings season.

Joining Guidewire are a few other names of note: UiPath (+8.2%), which just reported its earnings, is having a solid premarket showing.

There’s also discount retailer Dollar General (+4.6%), which jumped after reporting strong earnings this morning and raising its outlook.

Also one to watch: Meta (+2.8%), which just announced 30% cuts in its metaverse division. This one might have even more room to run, as investors heavily dislike the cash sink that has been Reality Labs.

Here are winning names this morning, per MarketWatch:

Meanwhile, on the other end of the market, spirits giant Brown-Forman (-5%) is plummeting after its own earnings report, which showed profits and revenues declining. This has been a common theme for the company, which has faced headwinds galore after its pandemic-era boom.

Rounding out the top three, New Fortress Energy (-4.4%) is declining after a strong rally in recent days, which came after it scored approval to provide liquefied natural gas to Puerto Rico as part of a seven-year, $3 billion+ deal.

Also of note: Kroger (-3.4%) came up short on revenue expectations, even while delivering a Q3 profit beat. One factor weighing on the grocer sized up its year-over-year sales, but left out ‘fuel guidance’, or revenue earned from its gas/fuel stations, a sign that lower oil prices could be the X factor in the company’s earnings.

Here are the losers this morning, per MarketWatch:

Good morning. U.S. stock futures are pretty close to flat this morning, with futures for the Nasdaq (-0.09%), Dow (+0.01%), and S&P 500 (+0.03%) taking a small rest after this morning’s initial jobless claims report registered the fewest unemployment claims since Sept. 2021, a three-year low.

The Russell 2000 (-0.35%), which tracks small cap growth index, was the sole decliner among equity benchmarks after the report showed just 191K filings in the week of Nov. 29. Continuing claims also declined; down from 1.943 million to 1.939 million, much lower than the consensus.

And Challenger Job Cuts — which measure layoffs — were nearly half what they were in October, coming in at just 71,321. That’s the odd one out, seeing how that figure is the worst November showing since 2022.

Here’s what’s on deck for this morning:

Nasdaq says we’re good for about 58 earnings reports this morning, making today the busiest day of this week. A handful of these reports are out this morning, with investors already reacting to the results — we’ll have more on that in a short bit in the premarket movers.

Here are the top 20 reports sorted by market cap:

As aforementioned, some of the big report today are already out — Initial and Continuing Claims chief among them, along with the Challenger Job Cuts data for November. These are the most timely reports.

In a short bit we’ll also get Factory Orders data for September (yeah, seriously) and hear from the Fed’s Bowman. Here’s the full list of events on deck today:

This story was originally published by TheStreet on Dec 4, 2025, where it first appeared in the Latest Business & Market News section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.