5 things to know before the stock market opens Thursday

Happy Thursday. If you keep CNBC on your TV tonight, you’ll be able to catch the WNBA Playoffs game between the Indiana Fever and Las Vegas Aces at 9 p.m. ET.

S&P 500 futures are higher this morning as the index looks to rebound from three straight losing sessions.

Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

Wall Street has officially entered the last quarter of the calendar year, but isn’t heading into the final three-month stretch of 2026 with too much momentum.

Here are the moves to know:

Micron beat Wall Street’s expectations on both lines in the fiscal fourth quarter, reporting an 11-fold increase in data center revenue during the period. The memory maker also offered better-than-expected guidance for the current quarter.

Despite the strong report, shares ticked slightly lower in premarket trading. The stock is coming off a monster rally of more than 500% over the last 12 months as it reaps the benefits of the AI boom’s memory supply crunch.

Don’t miss CEO Sanjay Mehrotra on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” at 9 a.m. ET today. Watch live on CNBC or CNBC+.

Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari told CNBC’s Steve Liesman last night that inflation is “still too high” and that the labor market is “pretty good” but not “great.”

Kashkari’s comments came even after August’s PCE price index — AKA the Fed’s favored inflation gauge — was softer than economists forecast. The Fed official told Liesman that inflation is “running at around a 3% rate,” saying of Wednesday’s report, “I didn’t think the inflation data today really changed that story for me very much.”

Speaking of the Fed: The central bank’s inspector general said yesterday that while there were management failures in the Fed’s renovation of its headquarters, it did not find grounds for a criminal referral. Even so, President Donald Trump called on former Fed Chair Jerome Powell to resign from the central bank’s board following the report.

Alphabet began rolling out its most advanced AI model yet, Gemini 4 Argon, to some cyber partners Wednesday. As CNBC’s MacKenzie Sigalos and Samantha Subin write, the long-awaited release comes nearly a year after Gemini 3 helped the company’s standing in the AI race.

Argon sets new records for real-world software engineering and is tied for first on cybersecurity, according to the Google parent, which said it already uses the model internally to improve memory optimization at its data centers.

Speaking of data centers, Senate Democrats voted down a bill focused on data center energy prices yesterday, saying the legislation didn’t go far enough. Sen. Josh Hawley also said that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman declined an invitation to testify at a Senate subcommittee hearing on the risks of AI going rogue.

Eli Lilly said yesterday that its combo obesity regimen improved weight loss in a mid-stage trial compared to tirzepatide — its best-selling drug — alone. Lilly plans to start phase three trials at the end of this year.

The combo therapy pairs Lilly’s experimental drug eloralintide with a small dose of tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Zepbound and Mounjaro. As CNBC’s Annika Kim Constantino reports, the trial results raise hopes for an alternative for patients who haven’t seen results from currently available GLP-1 products.

Ken Custer, president of Lilly Cardiometabolic Health, said that the combination regimen may “turn out to be a really winning approach.” Lilly is expecting to alter the dosing regimens in the next phase of trials.

— CNBC’s Liz Napolitano, Christopher Hayes, Spencer Kimball, Katie Tarasov, Kif Leswing, Steve Liesman, Matt Peterson, Jeff Cox, Samantha Subin, MacKenzie Sigalos, Justin Papp, Annika Kim Constantino and Kif Leswing contributed to this report.

Caleigh Keating assisted in the production of this newsletter. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.