5 things to know before the stock market opens Friday

Here are the most important news items that investors need to start their trading day:

Lordy, lordy the Dow hit 40k. The Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly jumped above 40,000 for the first time, although it ended the day slightly lower, back at 39,869.38. Still, the intraday high is the culmination of a bull market that began back in October 2022. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite also hit new records before falling to end the day. “This achievement is a testament to the powers of capital formation, innovation, profit growth and economic resilience,” said John Lynch, chief investment officer at Comerica Wealth Management. Follow live market updates.

Shares of Walmart hit an all-time high Thursday, rising about 7% after it beat Wall Street’s quarterly sales and revenue expectations. The company’s CFO attributed that, in part, to customers turning to Walmart’s grocery aisles for cheaper meals than they can get at quick-service restaurants. “It’s roughly 4.3 times more expensive to eat out than it is to eat at home,” he said. “And that’s benefiting our business.” But former Walmart U.S. CEO Bill Simon told CNBC’s “Fast Money” that affluent customers helped drive the beat and warned they may be hard to keep.

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the funding structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is legal. The ruling protects the agency — which draws its funding from the Federal Reserve system — from a potential death sentence. Congress created the CFPB in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to enforce consumer protection laws and to ensure a fair market for consumer financial products and services. It also authorized the CFPB to draw its funding from the Federal Reserve system to insulate it from political pressure by not relying on an annual appropriation from Congress. Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative, wrote the 7-2 majority opinion.

Figma, a cloud-based design tool company, said it will allow current investors, including current and former employees, to sell their shares in a tender offer. The offer values the company at $12.5 billion, which is up 25% from the valuation at which the company fundraised in 2021. But it falls short of the $20 million Adobe had offered in 2022 in an acquisition attempt before the deal fell apart after federal scrutiny. Tech companies like Google, Oracle and Salesforce use Figma’s software, as does Microsoft, which spends millions per year on its deployment.

Online home goods retailer Wayfair is taking a new approach: opening a brick-and-mortar store. It’s following a string of other digitally native companies that have turned to physical locations for growth, including Warby Parker, Figs, Glossier and Everlane. The 150,000-square-foot Wayfair megastore outside Chicago will offer a range of home items from furniture to appliances to decor. The move also comes as new retail store openings have outpaced store closures for the past few years, turning the tide from the so-called retail apocalypse and warnings that stores would die off.

— CNBC’s Lisa Kailai Han, Melissa Repko, Stephanie Landsman, Kevin Breuninger, Dan Mangan, Hayden Field, Deirdre Bosa and Gabrielle Fonrouge contributed to this report.

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Correction: Bill Simon is the former CEO of Walmart. A previous version of this article misstated his title.