Futures Rise Further After January Jobs Report, Unemployment Rate Come in Better Than Expected

Consumers Enter 2026 With More Reasons to Spend Cautiously

FROM 46 minutes ago

After years of revving up the economy, are consumers set to tap the brakes on their spending?

New data shows that retail sales stalled in December, falling short of expectations after several months of robust growth.1 And it could be an early signal that consumers are set to pull back their spending in 2026 as more face a worrisome jobs market.

“Consumer spending growth has been strong, although I think you can argue it has slowed at least a little bit,” said Scott Hoyt, senior director for Moody’s Analytics, who has also forecasted a slowdown in consumer spending growth this year. ”Part of it is because the labor market is so weak, we’re not adding a lot of jobs, and nobody seems to expect that to change materially.”

Consumer spending makes up around two-thirds of the U.S. economy, meaning even slight slowdowns can have a meaningful impact on economic activity. 

Read the full article here.

–Terry Lane

New Kraft Heinz CEO Says ‘Prudent to Pause’ Planned Separation

FROM 1 hr 6 min ago

Kraft Heinz apparently will not be splitting in two after all.

In its fiscal 2025 fourth-quarter earnings report, new Kraft Heinz (KHC) CEO Steve Cahillane said the company’s “challenges are fixable and within our control,” adding that “we believe it is prudent to pause work related to the separation and we will no longer incur related dis-synergies this year.”

Cahillane, who was Kellanova’s chief executive until its December acquisition by Mars, took over as Kraft Heinz’s CEO on Jan. 1. Kraft Heinz said in September that it planned to break up, undoing a merger that was just a decade old.

Kraft Heinz’s Q4 net sales declined 3.4% year-over-year to $6.35 billion, slightly worse than expectations of analysts surveyed by Visible Alpha, as volume/mix fell 4.7 percentage points, with declines in each segment. “Unfavorable volume/mix was primarily driven by declines in coffee, cold cuts, Indonesia, bacon, and Ore-Ida,” it said.

Although Q4 adjusted earnings per share of $0.67 topped estimates, its fiscal 2026 adjusted EPS guidance range of $1.98 to $2.10 was well below the consensus $2.48.

Kraft Heinz shares were down 7% before the bell. They entered the day down more than 15% over the past year.

What Is World Liberty Financial? What to Know About the Trump Family’s Crypto Firm

FROM 1 hr 27 min ago

The Trump family has a range of business interests—including a crypto company with big financial ambitions.

The company, World Liberty Financial, has a lending market called WLFI Markets. It has applied for a national banking charter through its World Liberty Trust subsidiary. And it bills itself as a DeFi, or “decentralized finance,” ecosystem, which broadly means it seeks to remove middlemen from financial transactions.

World Liberty Financial was founded by President Donald Trump, his sons, the president’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Witkoff’s sons. Its USD1 stablecoin, which aims to stay pegged to the U.S. dollar, is at the center of the Trump family’s crypto venture—as is its token WLFI, which was recently trading around 11 cents, a fraction of its peak around 33 cents since its September launch.

WLFI Markets lets users borrow and lend against digital assets using USD1. The app isn’t available everywhere in the U.S., including New York. But if it gains traction, it could boost the circulating supply of USD1 and, potentially, the interest income generated by the assets that back it.

Read the full article here.

–Crystal Kim

Raises Are Getting Harder to Come By

FROM 1 hr 53 min ago

If you weren’t happy with the raise you got this year, you were hardly alone.

Wages and salaries for private industry workers rose 0.7% in the fourth quarter, the slowest pace since the second quarter of 2021, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday. Year-over-year, wages were up 3.4%, the same as in the first quarter but a decline from the third quarter.

The slowdown in salary growth was the latest in a series of indications that the job market is getting tougher for workers as employers cut back on hiring. Job openings have also fallen to a post-pandemic low, with unemployed workers now outnumbering open jobs, and the unemployment rate has edged up since the beginning of 2025.

“The weak fourth-quarter growth in the [Employment Cost Index] aligns with the balance of labor market data, which was increasingly soft in the second half of 2025,” Dante DeAntonio, an economist at Moody’s Analytics, wrote in a commentary. “Employers are facing much less pressure to increase wages than in previous years.”

Read the full article here.

–Diccon Hyatt

Stock Futures Little Changed Ahead of January Jobs Report

FROM 2 hr 30 min ago

Futures contracts connected to the Dow Jones Industrial Average pointed 0.1% higher.

S&P 500 futures also were up 0.1%.

Nasdaq 100 futures were fractionally lower.