Fed Chair Jerome Powell yesterday said that the U.S. jobs market remains a long way from a full recovery, and that monetary policy would remain very accommodative until there was "substantial further progress" on employment and inflation. There was little sign of that progress in yesterday's slower-than-expected data on price growth, and today's initial jobless claims number 

totaled 793,000 last week as declining Covid-19 cases provided little relief for the jobs market. The total for the week ended Feb. 6 was above the 760,000 forecast from economists surveyed by Dow Jones but a slight decrease from the previous week’s upwardly revised total of 812,000 

Another glitzy IPO will begin trading today as a strong streak continues for stocks and the public markets. Bumble, the hot app which requires women to reach out first in hetero dating situations, will open on the Nasdaq under ticker symbol "BMBL." It's worth more than $8B, based on a higher-than-expected share price of $43, while the company increased the number of shares it sold to as many as 57.5M.

General Motors became the latest automaker yesterday to warn about a chip shortage, saying the semiconductor crunch could cut its earnings by $1.5B-$2B in 2021. It's not alone. Many companies across multiple industries have been flagging the problem in recent months, such as AMD and Qualcomm, which sell chips to most of the top electronics firms, or Sony, which blamed the shortage for why it's so hard to get a PS5.