Anything For You All: 10 things you need to know before the opening bell

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August 19, 2016

Here is what you need to know.

Crude oil is back in a bull market. West Texas Intermediate crude oil holds little changed near $48.25 a barrel. The energy component hit a six-week high Thursday and reentered bull-market territory as it has rallied 22% since its August 2 low.

The dollar is about to see a 'major long-term trend change.' Nautilus Investment Research's Tom Leveroni and Shourui Tian suggest that, with the US dollar index having fallen below the 100-day moving average, a "major long-term trend change" is about to take place. The duo's research found the index's performance in the three months following a break below the 100-day moving average is a loss of 3.29% on average during a three-month period, compared with the typical loss of 0.02% over the same time frame.

Wall Street is no longer New York's biggest jobs engine. William Dudley, the New York Federal Reserve president, said in a Thursday speech that growth in the city's tech sector was "picking up much of the slack created by the softness of the securities industry." Dudley pointed specifically to jobs in the internet publishing, online shopping, and scientific research and development industries.

The CEO of the world's oldest bank is reportedly under investigation. Monte Paschi CEO Fabrizio Viola and former chairman Alessandro Profumo are suspected of market manipulation and false accounting, a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. The recent stress tests that were held in July found that the Italian bank was the weakest in Europe.

A Deutsche Bank whistleblower won't be accepting his award. Eric Ben-Artzi, a former Deutsche Bank risk officer, said in a Financial Times op-ed article that he would not accept his $8.25 million reward for blowing the whistle on Deutsche Bank because the firm's executives should be the ones paying the award. "Deutsche did not commit this wrongdoing. Deutsche was the victim," Ben-Artzi wrote.

SolarCity is cutting costs. CEO Lyndon Rive and CTO Peter Rive will have their annual salaries reduced from $250,000 to $1 as part of the company's cost-cutting plan, Reuters reports. The announcement comes after earlier this month SolarCity lowered its 2016 installation forecast for a second time, thanks to a lower number of residential bookings.

Gap eked out an earnings beat. The apparel retailer earned an adjusted $0.60 a share on revenue of $3.85 billion. "While performance varied during the quarter, we made progress on our streamlining initiatives and continued to see signs of improvement in our larger brands," CFO Sabrina Simmons said in the earnings release.

Stock markets around the world are mixed. Spain's IBEX (-0.9%) leads the way down in Europe, and Japan's Nikkei (+0.4%) paced the gains in Asia. S&P 500 futures are down 5.00 points at 2,178.50.

Earnings reports trickle out. Deere & Co., Estee Lauder, and Foot Locker will report ahead of the opening bell.

US economic data is absent. However, the Baker Hughes rig count will cross the wires at 1 p.m. ET.