Major Indexes Open Lower After Rebounding Yesterday; Oil Rises Further as Middle East Fighting Reaches 6th Day

BJ’s Stock Drops as Fiscal 2026 Profit Outlook Disappoints

FROM 47 minutes ago

BJ’s Wholesale Club Holdings may have had a better-than-expected fiscal 2025 fourth quarter, but its fiscal 2026 profit outlook is sending shares sharply lower before the bell.

BJ’s (BJ) shares fell more than 4% in premarket trading Thursday after the warehouse club said it expects full-year adjusted earnings per share to range from $4.40 to $4.60. Analysts polled by Visible Alpha expected $4.67.

For Q4, the Marlborough, Mass.-based company reported adjusted EPS of $0.96 on revenue that rose 5.6% year-over-year to $5.58 billion. Analysts had called for $0.92 and $5.55 billion, respectively.

Shares of BJ’s Wholesale Club Holdings entered Thursday essentially flat over the past 12 months, but up 11% in 2026.

Berkshire Hathaway Resumes Buybacks; New CEO Abel Buys $15M of Stock

FROM 1 hr 38 min ago

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A; BRK.B) has started buying back its shares. Its new chief executive is getting in on the act.

The conglomerate announced in a regulatory filing Thursday that it started repurchasing its shares yesterday. It last did so in the second quarter of 2024.

“Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s long-standing common stock repurchase policy permits us to repurchase shares of our Class A and Class B Common Stock at any time we believe the repurchase price is below our intrinsic value, conservatively determined,” it wrote in the filing. “In the interest of transparency with our leadership transition, we are disclosing that we commenced repurchasing shares of our common stock under this policy on Wednesday, March 4, 2026.”

Greg Abel, who took over as Berkshire CEO from Warren Buffett at the start of the year, told CNBC that he purchased $15 million worth of Class A shares, the full amount of his after-tax annual salary, and that he plans to use his full salary to buy company shares each year.

The company on Saturday reported a nearly 30% year-over-year drop in fourth-quarter operating earnings to $10.2 billion in Buffett’s final quarter as CEO, as the company took write-downs of its stakes in Kraft Heinz (KHC) and Occidental Petroleum (OXY).

Berkshire’s Class B shares, which entered Thursday down 2% over the past 12 months, rose 1.3% before the bell.

401(k) Balances Hit a Record High in 2025—So Did Hardship Withdrawals

FROM 2 hr 16 min ago

For the sixth straight year, more Americans raided their retirement accounts during a crisis. They also finished the year with more money in their 401(k)s than ever before.

About 6% of workers in Vanguard’s 401(k) plans tapped emergency funds last year, while average account balances also hit an all-time high of $167,970, a 13% annual increase.

The markets rewarded those who stayed invested: the S&P 500 gained 16%, bonds rose 7%. The job market told a different story. Excluding health care, nonfarm payroll employment fell throughout most of 2025, layoffs surged to their highest level since the pandemic, and credit card delinquencies hit a 13-year high.

Read the full article here.

–Peter Gratton

Stock Futures Little Changed After Indexes Rebound

FROM 3 hr 4 min ago

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

S&P 500 futures were near flat.

Nasdaq 100 futures also were near the flat line.