5 things to know before the stock market opens Friday, August 19

Here are the most important news items investors need to start their trading day:

The three major U.S. indices are ready to open in the negative circle On Friday morning, hopes for a fifth consecutive win are fading. S&P 500Stocks have otherwise done pretty well since the brutal first half ended, but investors are still looking for certainty despite the recent slowdown in price gains. Sounds hawkish about raising interest rates to keep inflation down now, or at least in the near future. There are other problems with the economy.The broader recession story may have cooled somewhat, but housing facing a real slowdown, especially on the part of the builders.Yet housing prices are still high and people still paying the contractor to do the workaccording to the home improvement giant home depot When Lowes.

Memestock crowd favorite activist investor Ryan Cohen is out on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum Bed Bath & Beyond in the end. In a filing Thursday, Cohen’s RC Ventures said: Unloaded entire position At a troubled home goods store. Meme investors this week pushed the stock to a high not seen since the spring, but the past few days have revealed that Cohen will bail out the company after several big moves, including a CEO change in June. The stock price fell as the retailer’s Buybuy Baby business underwent a strategic review.Cohen is also the chairman of the Memestock Company. game stopwas pushing for a spin-off or sale of its units.

Interesting things are happening in the cryptocurrency market after a massive firestorm that has resulted in several bankruptcies and liquidity crises. early on friday, Crypto Market PlungeBitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, has fallen below $22,000 after breaking above $25,000 in a recent rally.Ether has also seen a much bigger rally than Bitcoin since hitting lows in June. A Planned Upgrade of the Ethereum Blockchain next month. Both Ether and Bitcoin are still far from their November highs.

Big changes are underway StarbucksThe coffee chain said Thursday that its head of operations, John Culver, said: leave the company 20 years later in October. He also said he would completely abolish the role of chief operating officer. Culver was seen as a frontrunner to be his CEO, but Howard Schultz took over on an interim basis earlier this year after Kevin Johnson retired. Schultz’s third appointment as Starbucks chief executive, many on Wall Street expect the company to name a successor at next month’s Investor Day. His next CEO will have to contend with a growing organizing movement at his coffee shop at the company.

president of china Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putinboth will attend the G20 meeting in November in Indonesia. According to ReutersThis will be Xi’s first visit outside of China since January 2020. COVIDoccurred in China and became a pandemic. The development comes as Putin continues the war in Ukraine after launching a unilateral invasion of Russia’s former Soviet neighbor earlier this year. Both the Xi Jinping and Putin regimes have been accused of human rights violations, which they deny.president Joe BidenThe administration has helped defend Ukraine, and is also expected to attend the G-20 summit, and talks between him and Xi Jinping are reportedly underway.Read what’s new in Ukraine here.

CNBC’s Jesse Pound, Diana Olick, Jack Stebbins, Amelia Lucas, Jenni Reid, and Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.

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