By Sam Boughedda
Investing.com -- Stocks roared back Thursday after a plunge on Wednesday over the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid, which has officially arrived on U.S. shores.
A second case was identified Thursday, after the first official case was revealed on Wednesday. Still, the Biden administration has a new push to get people vaccinated and boosted, and new testing rules for travelers.
It’s still not clear how dangerous the Omicron variant is or whether it will respond to current vaccines and treatments.
Lawmakers in D.C. managed to hammer out an agreement to keep the federal government funded until about February, and they were working to vote on that agreement as early as Thursday evening.
Meanwhile, the cartel of major oil producing countries decided to keep their planned production thresholds in place for next month, choosing not to retaliate against a number of nations, including the U.S., that released oil from their national reserves to help damp energy prices.
Here are three things that could affect the markets tomorrow:
1. Apple in spotlight
Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) was under scrutiny after Bloomberg reported that the company is facing slowing demand for its iPhone 13 lineup. Citing people familiar with the matter, the report said that Apple is telling vendors that a pick-up in orders in 2022 may not materialize.
The company has already felt the effects of the global supply chain issues and had to slash its iPhone 13 production target by around 10 million units for this year, while in the fourth quarter of the 2021 fiscal year it posted a rare revenue miss, due to supply chain challenges.
2. Oil prices in view
Investors will be watching oil price after the producer alliance OPEC+ stuck to the number of barrels it planned to roll out in January. For days on end, there had been speculation that the 23-nation OPEC+ — comprising the 13-member Saudi-led Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and 10 other oil producers steered by Russia — would cancel the additional 400,000 daily barrels it had targeted each month since July.
3. Jobs, jobs, jobs
On the economic front, better-than-expected weekly jobless claims data stoked optimism on the labor market recovery ahead of Friday’s monthly jobs report. The Labor Department reported that 222,000 people filed for unemployment insurance, confounding economists’ expectations for an 18,000 rise.
Nonfarm payrolls are expected to have increased by 560,000 in November, with unemployment rate expected to drop to 4.4%. The data are released at 8:30 AM ET (1230 GMT).
--Investing.com staff contributed to this report