1. Dow to open higher
U.S. stock futures were pointing to a higher open Friday on Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 closed lower for the third straight session Thursday as U.S.-China trade headlines pushed and pulled the market. While tracking to break four- and six-week winning streaks, the Dow and S&P 500 were each still only about 1% away from record highs. Following recent signs of slowing manufacturing, investors get November purchasing managers' data on manufacturing and services at 9:45 a.m. ET. Consumer sentiment figures for November and the latest Kansas City Fed manufacturing survey follow, respectively, at 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. ET. The busy week in retail earnings comes to an end Friday, with Foot Locker out with quarterly results before the opening bell.
2. China's Xi goes with the carrot and the stick
Chinese President Xi Jinping said Friday that Beijing wants a trade deal with the United States but is not afraid to "fight back." Reinforcing the upbeat tone adopted by China in recent days, Xi told a visiting U.S. business delegation that China holds a "positive attitude" toward the trade talks aimed at cementing a "phase one" deal. With the anti-government protests in Hong Kong adding complexity to U.S.-China trade talks, citizens in Hong Kong go to the polls Sunday in an election that is seen as a referendum on public support for the monthslong demonstrations.
3. Dalio's Bridgewater makes $1 billion on stock drop
Ray Dalio's Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund, is betting more than $1 billion on stock markets around the globe falling by March, according to The Wall Street Journal. The bet was assembled over months with the help of Wall Street firms including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the Journal said. It would pay off if either the S&P 500 or the Euro Stoxx 50, or both, were to decline, the report added. While there's been no immediate comment from Bridgewater, Dalio has been publicly sounding worried for months. At a CNBC-moderated panel at the IMF-World Bank annual meetings in Washington in October, he said the global business cycle is in a "great sag" and the world's economy holds at least two parallels to the 1930s.
4. Musk unveils Cybertruck; it didn't go as planned
Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the company's all-electric Cybertruck pickup Thursday night in Los Angeles. The vehicle, which represents a large metallic trapezoid, starts at $39,900. There's buzz around the internet and among the Wall Street analyst community about the strange design. Tesla analyst Toni Sacconaghi at Bernstien summed the sentiments, writing in a note to clients: "Tesla's Cybertruck looks weird … like, really weird." At the event, Musk claimed the car was "bulletproof." However, when he got Tesla's chief designer to throw a metal ball at the windows, they broke twice, and then Musk had to stand in front the smashed windows for the rest of the presentation.
5. Obama: Technology an instrument of division
Former President Barack Obama said that technology, despite its potential, has brought about greater inequality and made the public more divided. "People don't know what's true and what's not, and what to believe and what not to believe" on the internet, he said Thursday. Top tech companies such as Facebook, which owns Instagram and WhatsApp, and Alphabet's Google, which operates YouTube, now face antitrust scrutiny and regular criticism. The way the tech giants are handling political ads has also been a hot topic, with Facebook's hands-off approach and Google's aim to police false claims and allow only broad targeting. Twitter has banned political ads entirely.
— The Associated Press contributed to this report.