5 things to know before the stock market opens Thursday

Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

A few more for the books. The S&P 500 hit a new record on Wednesday, rising 1.18% to close at 5,354.03. The index also hit a new intraday all-time high of 5,354.16 during the session. The Nasdaq Composite likewise rose to a new record, climbing 1.96% to 17,187.90. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average trailed slightly by comparison, as the index rose 0.25% to close out the session at 38,807.33. Follow live market updates.

Things just keep getting better for Nvidia. Shares of the chipmaker passed the $3 trillion market cap milestone during Wednesday’s trading session, hitting $3.019 trillion at market close. The company also passed Apple — with a market cap of $2.99 trillion at market close — to become the second most valuable U.S. publicly traded company. Nvidia has stood on top of the podium as the key beneficiary of the artificial intelligence boom, which has propelled the stock upward since 2023. In just the past few weeks since the company reported its latest earnings results, the stock has popped more than 24%.

Attention all Walmart store and warehouse staff: The retailer is planning to offer new training programs and certifications to fill its high-demand roles across the business. This includes roles like HVAC technicians, opticians and software engineers. Walmart will also offer a bonus of up to $1,000 a year to hourly store employees, which isn’t the first time this year that the company announced financial rewards for its workers. Earlier this year, Walmart announced that store managers could make more than $400,000 a year through earning $20,000 worth of stock grants.

The largest alcohol distributor in the U.S. may soon be getting sued. Sources told CNBC that the Federal Trade Commission is preparing an antitrust lawsuit that will allege Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits — a Florida-based company that distributes alcohol for over 7,000 brands in 44 states — has been providing “secret kickbacks” to large retail customers and violating the antitrust law known as the Robinson-Patman Act of 1936. The lawsuit the FTC is preparing is not yet finalized and could be filed in a matter of weeks. In 2023, the company reported $26 billion in revenue, according to Forbes.

Houston, we have liftoff. Boeing launched the first crewed flight of its long-delayed Starliner spacecraft Wednesday, taking off at 10:52 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral, Florida. With two NASA astronauts onboard — Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — the flight is set to fly in space for about 25 hours before planning to dock with the International Space Station around midday on Thursday. The astronauts will then spend about a week on the station before returning to Earth. Meanwhile, down on Earth, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun is set to testify in a Senate hearing about whistleblower safety allegations and quality controls of Boeing aircraft on June 18.

— CNBC’s Brian Evans, Alex Harring, Kif Leswing, Melissa Repko, Rebecca Picciotto, Michael Sheetz and Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.

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