Oil and Bond Yields Pressure Stocks as Trump-Xi Summit Draws Focus

Brent crude rose 2% to $105 a barrel, and the 30-year Treasury yield reached 5.446%, its highest since 2004. Nasdaq futures were down about 1%, the worst of the selling, after stocks fell Wednesday as bond yields spiked.

The U.S. and China agreed to a two-month extension of their trade truce, now lasting until Jan. 10. Artificial intelligence and the Iran war were also expected to be major topics. American business leaders, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, were set to attend a state dinner that night.

A subplot to the Trump-Xi talks was whether Boeing would benefit from a firm aircraft order announcement. Wolfe Research analysts said they came away from a tour last week of Boeing's 737 production facility in Renton, Washington, feeling good about production level goals. They kept a buy rating but lowered their Boeing price target to $270 from $275, saying the stock remained compelling at current levels.

At Meta's Connect conference, the company announced an upgrade to its ecosystem built around its Muse personal agents. It introduced multiple new kinds of smart glasses, including a camera-free version aimed at privacy concerns, and lightweight virtual reality glasses inspired by Apple's Vision Pro but priced at $1,299 rather than $3,699. Meta also surprised attendees with a handheld device called Muse Charm designed to work with its new Muse personal AI agent. Meta shares fell 1.5% in premarket trading, though the stock was up more than 20% since the Muse agent launched earlier this month as of Wednesday's close.

Goldman Sachs issued a note saying AI agents such as Muse will transform e-commerce over the next three to five years and beyond. The analysts said they expected steady, measured progress toward end-to-end agentic shopping, where AI can increasingly act on behalf of consumers across discovery, comparison, purchase and payment. Goldman said Meta, Alphabet and Amazon were positively skewed toward that secular growth theme. Goldman also raised its outlook for behind-the-meter power generation for data centers and said GE Vernova was one of the best ways to play the conventional natural gas-powered side of growing energy demand. It noted GE Vernova's plans to expand gas turbine capacity as a positive and maintained a buy rating with a $1,268 price target, 33% above Wednesday's close of about $952.

Oracle shares fell more than 4% after Bloomberg reported that the company wants to delay payment on a major New Mexico data center development, called Project Jupiter, if the campus fails to come online as expected in 2028. Oracle sent a force majeure notice, a safety net for unforeseen and uncontrollable circumstances, to developer Blue Owl Capital, according to Bloomberg.

Starbucks said it is closing another 250 cafes in North America, about 1% of its U.S. and Canada locations. It was the second time in CEO Brian Niccol's two-year tenure that Starbucks has closed cafes deemed underperforming. The company will book $300 million in restructuring charges in the fiscal year ending this month. The stock has not been immune to a sell-off in consumer stocks in recent weeks amid rising gas prices.

Amazon announced that merchants using Amazon Supply Chain Services can offer free Prime delivery on their own websites at no additional cost. It also launched a volume discount shipping program with no long-term contracts or commitments. CNBC's Investing Club said that while it was watching Amazon's expanding third-party shipping business, it did not think the moves materially hurt FedEx or FedEx Freight.

Darden Restaurants reported quarterly earnings per share above estimates and revenue in line with estimates. Same-store sales rose 4.6%, compared with the 4.2% expected. But the company behind Olive Garden and other value and high-end concepts issued full-year EPS guidance below expectations, and its stock fell more than 3%. Costco, a CNBC Investing Club holding, was scheduled to report earnings that night.