Market Beats | CVS Raises Full-Year Profit Forecast and Expects Earnings Growth in 2026; US Job Openings Rose Slightly in October; Kevin Hassett Says Fed Has “Plenty of Room” to Cut Rates Sharply; JPMorgan Expects $105 Billion in Expenses Next Year; Manhattan Pollution Down 22% After Congestion Toll Takes Effect; Australia’s Youth Social Media Ban Takes Effect; OpenAI Hires Former Slack CEO as Chief Revenue Officer

—— CVS Raises Full-Year Profit Forecast and Expects Earnings Growth in 2026; US Job Openings Rose Slightly in October; Kevin Hassett Says Fed Has “Plenty of Room” to Cut Rates Sharply; JPMorgan Expects $105 Billion in Expenses Next Year; Manhattan Pollution Down 22% After Congestion Toll Takes Effect; Australia’s Youth Social Media Ban Takes Effect; OpenAI Hires Former Slack CEO as Chief Revenue Officer

1. CVS Raises Full-Year Profit Forecast and Expects Earnings Growth in 2026

CVS Health Corp. raised its full-year profit forecast and said earnings would rise in 2026, a sign of hope as it navigates a turbulent retail environment and government scrutiny across the health care industry.

Adjusted earnings would be as much as $7.20 per share in 2026, the health conglomerate said in a statement Tuesday. Analysts had expected $7.17 per share on average. The company also said it expects a profit this year of $6.60 to $6.70 a share, a 5-cent increase from its prior forecast.

The outlook suggests CVS expects to manage a volatile environment that has posed challenges for all three of its businesses. Health insurance plans are facing greater government scrutiny, drug benefit managers are changing their business practices, and retail pharmacies are struggling to increase their profits. The positive guidance for next year, and the increase in this year’s outlook, “should set the stage for what remains a robust growth recovery story,” analysts from Leerink Partners said in a note to clients.

Shares rose 2.4% in premarket trading as of 7:13 a.m. in New York. The company, which brought in a new chief executive officer in October 2024, has performed well so far this year, with shares rising more than 70% through Monday’s close.

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2. US Job Openings Rose Slightly in October

US job openings picked up in October to the highest level in five months, though less hiring and more layoffs pointed to a continued slowdown in the labor market.

The number of available positions rose slightly to 7.67 million in October from 7.66 million in the prior month, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data published Tuesday. Vacancies exceeded the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The release of both monthly figures was delayed because of the government shutdown.

While openings advanced, it was only driven by a handful of industries like retail and wholesale trade, as well as health care — the biggest driver of job growth this year.

Meanwhile, the number of layoffs in October rose to 1.85 million, the highest since early 2023. Dismissals increased in leisure and hospitality and in manufacturing. Hiring declined by 218,000 from the month prior to 5.15 million.

That’s consistent with more modest labor demand as employers adjust to a higher-cost environment — partly due to US trade policy — and lingering economic uncertainty. Other data point to a pickup in job-cut announcements. With concerns building about the labor market, investors widely expect Federal Reserve officials to lower interest rates on Wednesday by a quarter percentage point. US Treasury yields rose and the S&P 500 remained higher after the JOLTS report.

The quits rate, which measures the percentage of people voluntarily leaving their jobs, fell to the lowest since May 2020, suggesting people are less confident in finding new work.

Some economists have questioned the validity of the JOLTS data due to the survey’s low response rate and sizable revisions. A separate index from job-posting site Indeed, reported daily, showed openings declined in October but rebounded in November.

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3. Kevin Hassett Says Fed Has “Plenty of Room” to Cut Rates Sharply

White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said he sees plenty of room to substantially lower the Federal Reserve’s benchmark interest rate.

Hassett, the frontrunner in Donald Trump’s search for the next Fed chair according to a Bloomberg report, was asked at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit Tuesday if he would push for the substantially lower rates the president wants if he gets the job.

“If the data suggests that we could do it, then — like right now — I think there’s plenty of room to do it,” he said. Asked whether that meant more than 25 basis points, he said, “correct.”

Hassett’s close alignment with Trump has stirred debate over whether he would maintain the Fed’s decades-long tradition of political independence on interest-rate decisions should he be selected as chair.

Trump himself said in an interview with Politico published Tuesday that a quick reduction of borrowing costs would be a litmus test for his choice to head the Fed. Asked whether his loyalty, if he takes the Fed’s helm, would be to Trump or to his independent economic judgment, Hassett said he would adhere “to my judgment, which I think the president trusts.”

The comments followed Hassett’s remarks Monday, when he said it would be “irresponsible” to lay out a plan for interest rates over the next six months.

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4. JPMorgan Expects $105 Billion in Expenses Next Year

JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Marianne Lake said the bank anticipates spending $105 billion next year, an outlook that surpasses analyst estimates and sent shares falling Tuesday.

The biggest driver of the expected cost growth is “volume- and growth-related expenses,” the bank’s CEO of consumer and community banking said Tuesday at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. conference. She also pointed to strategic investments and the “structural consequence of inflation.”

JPMorgan shares dropped 3.9% to $302.88 at 1:11 p.m. Tuesday, the biggest intraday decline since the middle of October. That made it the worst performer in the KBW Bank Index. The guidance is higher than the top estimate from analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, and surpasses the average outlook for $101.1 billion. Costs of around $105 billion would also be roughly 9% more than what analysts are expecting for expenses in 2025. The bank’s non-interest expenses rose 4% in the first nine months of this year from the same period in 2024.

The consumer and community bank, which Lake runs, is a “big driver” of the expense growth, she said. She cited incentive compensation for advisers, product marketing, building branches and investing in artificial intelligence as examples of what’s causing the increase.

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5. Manhattan Pollution Down 22% After Congestion Toll Takes Effect

Pollution in parts of Manhattan declined by 22% in the first six months of this year after motorists began paying a new toll to drive south of 60th Street, according to a Cornell University analysis.

The new fee, the first of its kind in the US, began on Jan. 5. Passenger cars pay $9 during peak hours to drive into the tolled zone, which runs from 60th Street to the lower tip of Manhattan. The congestion pricing initiative has reduced traffic by about 11% and is set to bring in $500 million of net revenue in 2025 to help modernize the city’s more than 100-year-old transit network.

The study tracked 42 air-quality monitors throughout the New York City area over 518 days. It showed that from January through June, average daily PM2.5 concentrations decreased by 3.05 micrograms per cubic meter — a 22% drop from a projected average of 13.8 micrograms per cubic meter without congestion pricing.

Neighborhoods outside the tolled zone also experienced cleaner air. Average PM2.5 concentrations fell by 1.07 micrograms per cubic meter across the five boroughs and by 0.70 micrograms per cubic meter in the broader NYC region, including Long Island, northern suburbs, and parts of New Jersey.

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The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the city’s transit system and implemented the toll, is fighting in court to keep the program alive. The MTA sued the Trump administration in February after the US Department of Transportation revoked the federal authorization granted under the Biden administration. US District Judge Lewis Liman has said he will rule by year-end.

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6. Australia’s Youth Social Media Ban Takes Effect

Australia’s social media ban for youths took effect Wednesday, a landmark move that’s drawn global attention at a time governments are increasingly enacting rules to shield minors from toxic content and cyberbullying.

The law, passed last year, mandates services such as ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok and Meta Platforms Inc.’s Instagram keep under-16s off their platforms or face fines of up to A$49.5 million ($33 million). Australia becomes the world’s first democracy to undertake such a crackdown in response to growing concerns about social media’s harms.

It’s likely to be the first of many. Policymakers in Indonesia, Denmark, Brazil and other nations are also moving to rein in Big Tech, which counts young users as a key demographic since they are likely to fuel future growth. Additional platforms affected in Australia include Snap Inc.’s Snapchat, Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube, Reddit Inc. and more. All have said they will comply, though many have voiced opposition to rules they say were rushed through and risk pushing children into more dangerous corners of the internet. Still, Reddit said this week it’s launching new safety features globally for all under-18s.

There are early signs that young users in Australia, faced with the ban, are adopting rival services. Chinese-owned Rednote, an Instagram-like service also known as Xiaohongshu, saw weekly active users of its mobile app jump 37% over the week of Dec. 1 compared to the same period last year, according to market intelligence firm SensorTower. Coverstar, a service that bills itself as a safe social platform for Generation Alpha, saw usage in Australia skyrocket 488% over the same period, SensorTower said.

“I’ve always referred to this as the first domino,” Australia eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant told ASPI’s Sydney Dialogue summit last week. “We’ve reached a tipping point where something more forceful needed to be done.”

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7. OpenAI Hires Former Slack CEO as Chief Revenue Officer

OpenAI has hired Slack Chief Executive Officer Denise Dresser to be its chief revenue officer as the ChatGPT maker pushes to expand business adoption of its artificial intelligence products.

Dresser was named CEO at Slack in late 2023, after the workplace communication provider was acquired by Salesforce Inc. Dresser previously served as a longtime executive at Salesforce.

OpenAI now has more than 1 million businesses paying to use its enterprise AI products, but it faces growing competition from Anthropic PBC and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. The company is under pressure to grow revenue fast enough to justify its immense investments in AI development. OpenAI has said it’s committed to spend $1.4 trillion on infrastructure to support AI.

“I’ve spent my career helping scale category-defining platforms,” Dresser said in a statement. “I’m looking forward to bringing that experience to OpenAI as it enters its next phase of enterprise transformation.”

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