Weekly Jobless Claims Remain Tame, More Q4 Earnings Beats

Thursday, February 26th, 2026

Pre-market indexes are swinging back into positive territory from lower early-morning levels, now erasing the big losses in the first part of this week on all but the small-cap Russell 2000, which is break-even over the past five trading days. This morning, the Dow is +110 points, +0.22%, the S&P 500 is +6, +0.09%, the Nasdaq +7, +0.03% and the Russell 2000 +4, +0.18%.
 

Jobless Claims Come In-Line to Lower: 212K, 1.833M

It’s a “normal” Thursday morning, so we get new Weekly Jobless Claims figures, and once again they came in historically low. Initial Claims reached 212K for last week, below the 215K expected but generally within range, and slightly above the upwardly revised 208K the previous week. Early this month we were pushing upwards of 230K new jobless claims, but have since moved back down to holiday season trends.

Continuing Claims dropped for the first time in four weeks, to 1.833 million from a downwardly revised 1.864 million the prior week. This is the lowest tally of longer-term jobless claims since the second week of January, and well below the 1.9+ million range we’d been in for most of 2025.

Labor numbers these days need to come with some asterisks. Major revisions and audits hit previous reads, particularly on the monthly employment numbers, making real-time headlines less than fully steady. In the case of these weekly claims, we are likely not getting a full employment picture based on 1) longer-term claims expire (after 26 weeks or 52 weeks, commonly) and fall out of the tallies, 2) severance packages from mass layoffs are keeping a significant number of claims from being filed, and 3) recent college grads unsuccessfully finding first jobs in their fields are not counted in these totals, either.
 

Earnings Reports at a Glance: CELH, SHAK, BIDU & More

Among the biggest gainers on earnings this morning is energy drink company Celsius Holdings CELH, which posted a +38.4% positive earnings surprise to 26 cents a share, from 14 cents reported in the year-ago quarter. It’s the thirds earnings beat in the last four quarters. Revenues were also impressive: +13.1% to $721.63 million, as was the comment that Celsius now claims 20% of the U.S. energy drink market. Shares are up +15% on the news. For more on CELH’s earnings, click here.

Shake Shack SHAK beat earnings estimates by a penny to 37 cents per share, and this plus news the company has hired a new CFO are helping lift shares +11.8% in pre-market trading. This already adds to the +13.5% gains the stock has made year to date, making it one of the most successful near-term quick-service restaurant (QSR) stocks after a steep drop last summer.

Baidu BIDU also outpaced earnings estimates — $1.52 per share versus expectations of $1.47, for a +3.4% earnings surprise — and also beat on revenue estimates. However, as sales continue to erode for the Chinese search-engine giant, we see shares -3% on this news. This swings the stock into the red year-to-date after +48% growth over the prior year.

After the close, Dell Technologies DELL reports its Q4 results. Estimates are for strong growth on both earnings and revenues: +32% and +33.3%, respectively. The tech major has beaten earnings estimates in three of the past four quarters.

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