5 things to know before the stock market opened on February 19, 2021

Here are the most important news, trends and analysis that investors need to start their trading day:

U.S. stock futures soared on Friday after the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq suffered their biggest losses in one day in the scorching month of February. The Dow Jones, which broke a three-day winning streak and fell from a closing record, remained on track for a positive week, which would be its third consecutive week. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq are in a three-day losing streak and are on pace with the first few weeks of losses in the past three.

Bitcoin – which exceeded $ 52,000 this week – reached another historic record on Friday close to $ 53,000 per unit. After Tesla and other companies recently showed support for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, major financial companies also seemed to be enthusiastic about it. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told CNBC on Thursday that she believes bitcoin is a “highly speculative asset”.

While the House plans to approve its version of President Joe Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan by the end of next week, Yellen told CNBC that a major stimulus package is needed to get the economy back to total force. “The price of doing very little is much higher than the price of doing something big,” she said. “We believe that the benefits will far outweigh the costs in the long run.” Democrats hope to get their bill through Congress before March 14, when the main federal unemployment benefits programs expire.

Biden is expected to announce on Friday that the US will spend $ 4 billion on international vaccination efforts against Covid. He will make the promise during his first virtual meeting as president with G-7 leaders. Biden will also ask other nations to put more money into the global fight against the pandemic.

At the end of the day, Biden travels to Michigan to visit Pfizer’s vaccine factory in Kalamazoo, a trip that was supposed to take place on Thursday but has been delayed due to winter. Biden made his first domestic trip as president on Tuesday, traveling to Wisconsin for a meeting at CNN city hall about the coronavirus.

Uber’s shares fell 3% in the pre-market after the UK’s top court ruled on Friday that the company’s drivers should be classified as workers rather than independent contractors. The decision ends a nearly five-year legal battle between Uber and a group of ex-drivers in Britain. Uber insists that its drivers are self-employed and that it acts more like an “agency” that connects them to passengers through an app. The company faced a challenge in its domestic market, California, in November, when voters supported an electoral proposal that cemented the delivery of food based on apps and the status of drivers who hitchhiked as independent contractors, not employees.

During the GameStop hearing on Thursday at Capitol Hill, Ken Griffin of Citadel defended a controversial method that brokers use to make money and said his company would adapt if new regulations banned the practice. Members of Congress spent much of their time inciting “order flow payment,” a practice in which a broker receives payment from a market maker like Citadel to direct the order to them. This model is how Robinhood and other brokers are able to offer negotiations without commission. “I believe payment for order flow has been an important source of innovation in the industry,” said Griffin.

– Reuters contributed to this report. Follow all developments on Wall Street in real time with the CNBC Pro live markets blog. Get the latest pandemic news with our coronavirus blog.