5 things to know before the stock market opens – NBC Connecticut

• The Dow inched higher Monday, while the S&P and Nasdaq moved lower.
• OpenAI changed course on its policies toward secondary share sales.
• Novo Nordisk is building yet another manufacturing plant in Clayton, North Carolina.

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

1. Not going Dow-n

Breaking with the two other major indexes, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose higher Monday, advancing 0.67% to close at 39,411.21. On the other hand, the S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq both fell, sliding 0.31% to 5,447.87 and 1.09% to 17,496.82, respectively. In fact, Monday marked the worst day for the Nasdaq since April. Nvidia also fell during the previous trading session, declining 6.7%. With these losses, the stock is now down 13% from its peak last week, when it briefly surpassed Microsoft in market cap to become the world’s most valuable company. Follow live market updates.

2. Reverse, reverse

OpenAI is walking back its controversial stock sale policies. CNBC has learned that the artificial intelligence startup will now allow current and former employees to participate equally in annual tender offers. In a document shared last week through OpenAI’s equity administration software and viewed by CNBC, OpenAI changed its policy, saying that “all sellers (current and former service providers) will have the same sales limit.” This includes employees and advisors, OpenAI said in the document. The company previously established rules that allowed OpenAI to determine who can participate in stock sales, CNBC reported. This restrictive approach had generated fear from shareholders over their ability to get liquidity for some of their millions of dollars in shares.

3. Upping the dose

Novo Nordisk is giving its drug therapies a boost. The Danish drugmaker announced that it’s building a new manufacturing facility in Clayton, North Carolina, spending $4.1 billion to increase the supply of its blockbuster weight loss drug Wegovy and diabetes treatment Ozempic, among other injectable therapies. The company said the 1.4 million-square-foot facility – which is expected to be completed between 2027 and 2029 – will be responsible for filling and packaging syringes and injection pens. Drugs like Wegovy have recently faced record-high shortages in the U.S. as demand has outpaced supply. This year, Novo Nordisk plans to invest $6.8 billion in production, an increase from around $4 billion in 2023.

4. Adding to Plus

Paramount Global is hiking its streaming prices. The company said on Monday that it’s going to raise the cost of its Paramount+ with Showtime plan and Paramount+ Essential option for all new subscribers starting on August 20. For those customers, the Paramount+ with Showtime plan will increase by $1 to $12.99 a month, and the Paramount+ Essential option will increase by $2 to $7.99 a month. Current Paramount+ with Showtime customers will see the price increase hit their accounts on or after September 20, however, current Paramount+ Essential customers won’t have to pay the higher price tag at all. The price hike for the streaming service comes after National Amusements ended Paramount merger talks with Skydance earlier this month.

5. Box office buzz

“Inside Out 2” may be on its way to the billion-dollar club. As of Sunday, the film by Disney and Pixar has garnered $724.4 million worldwide. This makes it the highest-grossing film of 2024, officially surpassing Warner Bros. and Legendary Entertainment’s “Dune: Part Two” at $711.8 million. And the numbers could go even higher for the animated feature, as it still has yet to open in Japan – a country that made up nearly $33 million of the $850.5 million global total that the first movie had generated. If the film tops $1 billion, this would make it the first since Warner Bros.′ “Barbie” to do so at the global box office. What’s more, no Disney animated feature from Pixar or Walt Disney Animation has earned more than $480 million at the global box office since 2019.

— CNBC’s Hakyung Kim, Yun Li, Hayden Field, Annika Kim Constantino, Lillian Rizzo and Sarah Whitten contributed to this report.

— Follow broader market action like a pro on CNBC Pro.