US equity markets lower in the wake of the latest weekly jobless claims figures and with investors still looking for signs of progress in fiscal stimulus talks to support the economy - Dow down -70-points or -0.20% and slipping back below <30,000. The Walt Disney Co gained over >3% in extended trading the company revealed that its Disney+ platform now has 86.8M subscribers during its annual investor day. The figure is up from the 73M that the company reported at the end of its fiscal fourth quarter. The broader S&P500 dipped -0.13%, paring an earlier decline of as much as -0.75%. The S&P energy index closed at a six-month high The Dow and S&P logged their first back-to-back declines since 18 November. Nasdaq added +0.54%. Twitter Inc gained +8.4% after the social-media company said it added a feature allowing users to put their tweets in Snapchat and Instagram. Google-parent Alphabet Inc fell -0.49% and Amazon.com Inc -0.09% after France’s data privacy watchdog fined the companies for breaching the country’s rules on online advertising trackers. The small capitalisation Russell 2000 index continued to outperform with a +1.0% rise
