The company saw its revenue more than double in the most recent quarter and sent what analysts viewed as an optimistic signal about its future pipeline.

“[L]arge deal activity appears to be building, and international markets are picking up momentum,” wrote Mizuho analyst Gregg Moskowitz. “More broadly, we maintain that SNOW’s offerings are substantially ahead of the competition at this time.”

Moskowitz keyed in on commentary from Snowflake’s management team noting that the company had a “breakout quarter” for bookings and consumption, even though some of its outperformance came from stronger-than-expected consumption by Snowflake’s largest customers. Overall, he called Snowflake’s results “phenomenal.”

“We continue to believe we’re in the early stages of a powerful trend in which companies will largely standardize on SNOW’s platform,” Moskowitz concluded, while reiterating a buy rating and $450 price target.

Evercore ISI’s Kirk Materne was upbeat about Snowflake’s reacceleration in product revenue growth during what he called a “monster quarter” for the company.

“While the bigger-than-expected beat was driven by strong consumption from some of SNOW’s larger customers, the upbeat guide for F4Q product revenue (+94-96%) helps illustrate that the trends in the business are durable and why Snowflake remains one of the really unique hyper-growth stories in software,” he wrote.

Snowflake “is not going to be immune to more market gyrations” if the macroeconomic landscape stays “volatile,” Materne continued, but he likes the company’s long-term prospects. He rates the stock at outperform, and boosted his price target to $400 from $380.

Among the high points for Oppenheimer’s Ittai Kidron was that Snowflake posted its first quarter on record of positive adjusted earnings while sporting a net revenue retention rate above 170%.

“We see a long trajectory of rapid revenue increases for the next few years fueled by an [information technology] shift to a cloud-centric model, digital transformation, and higher spend on [machine learning]/data science,” he wrote in a note to clients, while reiterating his outperform rating and lifting his target price to $400 from $360.

Shares of Snowflake have increased 23% so far this year as the S&P 500
SPX,
+0.55%
has gained 21%.

See: After high hopes for Merck’s COVID-19 pill, Wall Street now expects a ‘tepid’ authorization

While South Africa has reported a steep rise in daily cases — to 8,561 cases on Wednesday from 1,275 a week earlier — doctors say symptoms so far have been mostly mild and vaccine makers have said they believe their products will still offer protection or can be tweaked relatively quickly.

” We have more tools today to fight the Omicron variant than we have had to fight previous variants, including Delta,” the White House said in a statement.

It noted that almost 60% of Americans are fully vaccinated, booster shots are authorized for all adults, and children aged 5 and older have been added to the vaccine program.

“Today’s actions will ensure we are using these tools as effectively as possible to protect the American people against this variant and to continue to battle the Delta variant during the winter months when viruses tend to thrive,” said the statement. “These actions will help keep our economy growing and keep Americans safe from severe COVID-19.”

See: Confused about whether to get a COVID booster? Here’s what to know.

As expected, the new measures will require travelers into the U.S. to get a PCR test 24 hours before departure, and not 72 hours as currently required. But the bigger news is the expansion of at-home testing, with President Joe Biden planning to announce that private insurers will offer reimbursement.

For the uninsured, the government will offer free tests at health centers and rural clinics, giving Americans the ability to quickly test themselves before joining friends or relatives over the holidays.

Biden will also extend the requirement to wear a face mask on public transport, including planes, trains and buses through March 18. “Fines will continue to be doubled from their initial levels for noncompliance with the masking requirements – with a minimum fine of $500 and fines of up to $3,000 for repeat offenders,” said the statement.

The U.S. is still averaging more than 900 COVID deaths a day, according to a New York Times tracker, and cases and hospitalizations are rising. Michigan remains the state with the highest daily case rise on a per capita basis at more than 8,000 cases a day.

Elsewhere, Germany has followed Austria in imposing restrictions on unvaccinated people, that will bar them from access to all but the most essential businesses, Reuters reported. They also agreed to pass legislation in the national parliament to make vaccination mandatory.

Authorities fear the fourth wave of COVID-19 risks overwhelming intensive care units and on Thursday it resulted in more than 73,000 new infections and 388 deaths.

The World Health Organization warned Wednesday that a “toxic mix” of low vaccination rates and low testing rates were creating the grounds for more variants to emerge, AFP reported. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also said for now, delta remains the more dominant variant.

“We need to use the tools we already have to prevent transmission and save lives from delta. And if we do that, we will also prevent transmission and save lives from omicron,” Tedros told a press conference.

From the U.K., drug maker GlaxoSmithKline
GSK,
+0.56%

GSK,
-0.16%
said a preclinical analysis of its antibody-based COVID therapy suggests it will work against omicron. The therapy is being developed with Vir Biotechnology
VIR,
-2.49%,
which saw its shares soar on the news.

Rich countries donating COVID vaccines must give “better quality” doses rather than ones that are about to expire, a Covax chief said Wednesday after the scheme notched a new delivery record, News9live.com reported. Covax is a United Nations program that aims to deliver vaccines to lower-income countries.

See: Risk of government shutdown rises as Republicans take aim at vaccine mandate

Don’t miss: ‘Vaccine’ chosen as word of the year by Merriam-Webster

Latest tallies

he global tally for the coronavirus-borne illness climbed above 263.6 million on Tuesday, while the death toll edged above 5.22 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. continues to lead the world with a total of 48.7 million cases and 782,100 deaths. 

India is second by cases after the U.S. at 34.6 million and has suffered 469,724 deaths. Brazil has second highest death toll at 614,964 and 22.1 million cases. In Europe, Russia has the most fatalities at 272,279 deaths, followed by the U.K. at 145,586.

China, where the virus was first discovered late in 2019, has had 111,353 confirmed cases and 4,809 deaths, according to its official numbers, which are widely held to be massively understated.

The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage, meanwhile, fell three basis points to an average of 2.39%. The 5-year Treasury-indexed adjustable-rate mortgage averaged 2.49%, up two basis points from the previous week.

“The consistency of rates in the face of changes in the economy is primarily due to the evolution of the pandemic, which lingers and continues to pose uncertainty,” Freddie Mac chief economist Sam Khater said in the report.

Typically, mortgage rates will roughly follow the direction of long-term bond yields, particularly the 10-year Treasury note
TMUBMUSD10Y,
1.433%.
But this week that didn’t happen. Investors rushed to the safety of bonds in light of the market’s initial downturn and subsequent volatile streak in light of the emergence of the omicron variant of the virus that causes COVID-19. When demand for bonds rises, their yields drop.

At the same time though, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell signaled that inflation was running hotter for longer than anticipated, indicating that we should ditch the word “transitory” when describing rising prices. As a result, he said that the central bank may stop its asset-purchasing stimulus program sooner than originally indicated.

Since the start of the pandemic, the Fed has been buying billions of dollars of assets to boost the economy. Those purchases have included mortgage-backed securities, which pumped a great deal of liquidity in the mortgage market. That liquidity allowed lenders to trim interest rates to the record lows seen earlier in the COVID crisis — but without those funds, lenders will need to hike rates to make up the difference.

Realtor.com, for instance, expected that mortgage rates will increase to 3.6% by the end of 2022, said George Ratiu, the real-estate platform’s manager of economic research. He noted that the expected rise in rates will create “even more affordability challenges for first-time buyers.”

Of courses, there’s still a major variable out there that could drastically affect the trajectory of interest rates: The omicron variant.

“Economic data continues to show struggles in the supply chain that indicate higher inflation may be more persistent than previously expected,” said Zillow
Z,
+2.08%
ZG,
+2.12%
vice president of capital markets Paul Thomas. “The big wildcard for markets – and mortgage rates – will be the impact the omicron variant may have on economic recovery.”

“This is debt,” Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate.com, told MarketWatch. “I don’t think people often think of it that way. I think that it’s kind of deceiving, and that can be a bit of a slippery slope.”

Among the big players in the buy now, pay later (BNPL) industry: Afterpay
APT,
-6.08%,
an Australian financial technology company that recently agreed to be acquired by Square
SQ,
-3.39%
; San Francisco-based Affirm
AFRM,
-1.48%
; and Klarna, a Stockholm-based fintech which has received funding from Softbank
9984,
-5.10%.

They have made it easier for consumers to shop and, as such, blow their budgets. These services loan consumers money that allows them to purchase an item immediately, and pay that money back — usually interest-free — in a predetermined number of installments spread out over several weeks.

How do these services make money?

Suddenly, a $200 jacket becomes four payments of $50 every two weeks, automatically debited from your bank account. So how do these services make money? Affirm offers payments at an interest rate between 0%–30% APR based on a customer’s credit score, but does not charge late fees.

Afterpay loans are interest-free with a 25% upfront payment and another 25% payment every two weeks until the loan is fully paid. Late fees apply: An initial $10 late fee, and another $7 if the payment remains unpaid 7 days after the due date. Late fees are capped at 25% of the original purchase amount.

Klarna also offers interest-free payments. “If we are unable to collect a biweekly payment on the scheduled day, we will try again,” the company says. “If the payment is unsuccessful when we retry, a late fee of up to $7 and the missed payment will be added to the next scheduled payment.”

U.S. retailers Seattle-based Amazon
AMZN,
+0.43%
and Bentonville, Ark.-based Walmart WMT work with Affirm, making it easy for shoppers to use these services at checkout. With Amazon, consumers can use BNPL on eligible purchases of $50 or more. Walmart has a range of BNPL items from TVS to furniture.

It’s no surprise that the BNPL model gained popularity during the pandemic as cash-strapped Americans turned to online shopping for nearly all their needs. The services are especially popular among younger consumers — nearly 75% are either Gen Z or millennials, according to Insider Intelligence. 

Since the partnership with Affirm began with Walmart in 2019, the program has provided flexible payments and “served millions of customers and is one of Walmart’s fastest growing financial services products,” Walmart said in a statement to MarketWatch. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.

Critics say consumers should proceed with caution. Buy now, pay later “is kind of the proverbial Wild West: Sometimes it works for you, but sometimes you kind of slip through the cracks a little bit,” Rossman said. In other words, despite their best intentions, people incur late fees and/or pay high rates of interest.

So before you use buy now, pay later for your holiday shopping, here’s what you should know about the potential pitfalls of the service.

‘People spend more when they use buy now, pay later’

“The biggest pitfall is that consumers tend to overspend,” Joe Buhrmann, senior financial planning consultant at eMoney Advisor, said. In fact, BNPL users plan to spend on one gift what the average shopper plans to spend for the entirety of their holiday shopping this season, according to a Morning Consult report.

“I think there is an impulse element to this, and that these companies do make a lot of money by partnering with retailers. There’s a lot of data that people spend more when they use buy now, pay later, [and] they come back again and again,” Rossman added.

“We’re generally talking about a population that maybe doesn’t have great credit or maybe doesn’t have much experience with credit. I think especially when we’re talking young adults, there’s definitely a potential to get in over your head without even realizing it,” he added.

BNPL is not as tightly regulated as other financial services

Considering BNPL is the “proverbial Wild West,” as Rossman said, the industry doesn’t have the same kind of regulations as other financial products. Whereas credit-card issuers are required to consider a consumer’s ability to repay loans, BNPL lenders are not.

Klarna conducts “robust eligibility assessments on each and every transaction a consumer attempts to make, so we only lend to those who can afford to repay,” a spokesperson told MarketWatch via email. Klarna said it supports “reasonable regulation” for BNPL and that it’s comfortable “operating in a regulated environment.”

“We do not, however, believe no-interest products should be regulated in the same way as high-interest products, which could ultimately impact our ability to provide responsible credit alternatives to millions of Americans,” a spokesperson said.

Affirm said it has models that continuously learn and that have been “built on billions of data points, over the course of our near-decade of operations and considers data beyond traditional credit scores, including transaction history and credit usage, to assess a consumer’s ability to repay.”

“Afterpay is subject to key consumer protection laws and regulations, including anti-money laundering, fair lending, credit reporting, debt collection, privacy, fair treatment of customers, and electronic fund transfers,” a spokesperson told MarketWatch.

BNPL can make returns complicated, especially when it comes to consumer disputes, Rossman added. “Anytime a middleman gets involved, it can be kind of confusing,” he said. “Sometimes, even after you’ve sent an item back to the merchant, the buy now, pay later company is still asking for its cut.”

What happens if you fall behind on installments?

A whopping 34% of BNPL users have fallen behind on their payments, a Credit Karma survey found, and 72% of those who did fall behind believed the missing payment hurt their credit score.

Younger users are more likely to miss payments, the Credit Karma survey found. More than half of Gen Z and millennial users report missing payments, compared with 22% of Gen X and 10% of baby boomers.

“With numbers like this, it’s important that BNPL users don’t get in above their heads and get caught in a vicious payday-loan type of cycle,” Buhrmann said.

Other than a few instances, the BNPL services largely take place outside of the traditional credit-scoring system, Rossman said. Some companies do what’s called a “soft” credit check when you sign up for a BNPL plan, so there’s no impact to your credit score there.

But the fintech companies say they have systems in place to help prevent their customers from falling behind in payments.

Afterpay uses a proprietary risk system model for each transaction, and doesn’t conduct soft credit checks, Zahir Khoja, general manager of Afterpay’s North America division, told MarketWatch. Afterpay also does not report to the credit bureaus, Khoja said.

However, for some of these services, if you pay really late — typically 90 or more days late — “there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll be reported to the credit bureaus and that could hurt you,” Rossman said.

Klarna has multiple checks in place to help customers make sure they don’t miss payments, including emails and in-app notifications, a Klarna spokesperson said.

That customer is then unable to use Klarna until late payments are made, and also has limited access to the service going forward so “they are unable to accrue additional debt — unlike the traditional credit model,” Klarna said.

But if a Klarna customer continues to not make the repayment, it’s turned over to debt collection, which occurs approximately 82-90 days after purchase, a Klarna spokesperson said.

On Afterpay, if the customer continues to go late, their ability to use the platform is suspended until payment is made. “In very certain circumstances, we may work with third-party agencies to collect on those funds, but we only work with agencies that have that light, friendly approach,” Khoja said of Afterpay.

Think of the total price, not the installments, and stay organized

“A lot of people end up overspending, because they do multiple plans, and then they get confused and disorganized and they pay late, and then there’s fees associated with that,” Rossman said.

But if you are going to use BNPL, “be sure to write down the purchase price, the amount remaining, the payment amounts and the schedule of payments. Put the list in a prominent place so these seemingly small amounts won’t slip through the cracks and weaken your financial health,” Buhrmann said.

Think of the total price when you’re deciding whether to purchase the product, Rossman said. “There’s this kind of mental accounting that I think sometimes hides the true amount that you’re spending.” So think of it as a $200 jacket, not four payments of $50.

You can set up automatic payments, but make sure you actually have that money in your account to avoid overdraft fees.

“Ideally, what you would do is use a credit card, get the rewards, get the better buyer protections and pay in full before interest hits, but of course some people don’t like that or they need more time or they don’t have good credit,” Rossman said. “So there are times buy now, pay later could work, but I would tread carefully personally.”

A vote in the House is expected on Thursday.

It’s unclear how the measure will fare in the Senate, where a group of GOP conservatives has been planning to object to quick consideration of such a stopgap budget without an agreement to deny money to enforce the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for large companies.

Read more: Biden administration asks court to allow employee vaccine mandate

And see: Congress faces shutdown deadline, hurdles for Biden’s Build Back Better plan

Republicans are not united in threatening a shutdown. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said Wednesday “I think we’re going to be OK,” when asked about the prospect of a shutdown.

U.S. stocks traded higher on Thursday morning, in what has become an increasingly volatile market resulting in uncertainty over the spread of coronavirus and a fuzzy path for monetary policy and the U.S. economy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+1.34%
 was recently up 0.8%, while the S&P 500 index
SPX,
+1.08%
 added 0.5% and the Nasdaq Composite Index
COMP,
+0.73%
rose 0.4%.

What are yields doing?

• The yield on the 10-year Treasury note
  TMUBMUSD10Y,
  1.441%
  was at 1.421%, down from 1.433% at 3 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday. Yields and debt prices move in opposite directions.

• The 2-year Treasury yield
  TMUBMUSD02Y,
  0.610%
  rose to 0.595%, from 0.563% Wednessday afternoon.

• The 30-year Treasury bond yield
  TMUBMUSD30Y,
  1.761%
  dropped to 1.749%, down from 1.778% on Wednesday.

What’s driving the market?

Yields remained mixed in Thursday morning trade, following Wednesday’s announcement by the U.S. of its first confirmed case of the omicron variant involving a person from California. Meanwhile, data released on Thursday showed that initial jobless claims climbed 28,000 to 222,000 during Thanksgiving week.

Financial markets have been on a roller-coaster ride in recent sessions as investors attempted to come to grips with the prospect of a faster-than-expected tapering of bond purchases by the Federal Reserve, along with the implications of the omicron variant.

On Wednesday, the 30-year Treasury yield fell to its lowest level in almost 11 months after the U.S.’s announcement, while the 10-year rate dropped to its lowest since Nov. 9, based on 3 p.m. levels, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

The drop in long-dated yields came as rates five years or less remained higher, flattening the spread between 2- and 10-year rates and the gap between 5- and 30-year yields for a second session, according to Tradeweb data.

Wednesday’s trading included a wild, 1,000-point swing by Dow industrials as the U.S. confirmed its first omicron case, ushering in an unsettling phase of volatility.

Investors have also been focused on this week’s comments to lawmakers by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, who said he said that he doesn’t think the central bank’s plan to pull back on asset purchases should disrupt financial markets. Powell has also surprised market participants, by opening the door to speeding the tapering process when policy makers meet later this month.

Ahead for later on Thursday are appearances by Fed Gov. Randal Quarles, who is set to speak at 11 a.m. Eastern time, and by Fed presidents Mary Daly and Tom Barkin, who are set to speak about the labor market around 11:30 a.m.

Friday’s data will include nonfarm payrolls for November.

What are analysts saying?

“Higher daily volatility has scrambled technical signals for benchmark interest rates,” Jim Vogel, executive vice president at FHN Financial, wrote in a note. “The effective range for 10s heading into payrolls is 1.40-1.55%; the potential for moves in that band is 5bp in any given hour.” Meanwhile, “the range for the 5-yr is also 15bp, from 1.13%-1.28%.”

Many sports-betting operators are also publicly held companies, and some have non-sports betting aspects of their business, like entertainment and casino operations.

Here is how sports-betting stocks performed in November:

DraftKings

Shares of DraftKings Inc.
DKNG,
+3.32%
plummeted 26.4% in November, drastically underperforming a roughly 1.03% drop from the S&P 500
SPX,
+1.08%
over the same period.

DraftKings is coming off a rough October that saw more losses for its stock price.

During the company’s third-quarter earnings report, the Boston-based sports betting company posted widening losses and revenue that missed forecasts.

“On a same state basis and taking into consideration lower than expected hold primarily due to NFL game outcomes, third quarter revenue would have been $40 million higher,” the company stated.

Along with Zillow
Z,
+3.74%
and Virgin Galactic
SPCE,
+2.29%,
DraftKings joined MarketWatch’s list of stocks that are down at least 50% from their 2021 highs.

DraftKings is down 32.68% YTD.

Penn National Gaming

Shares of Penn National Gaming Inc.
PENN,
+4.22%
 sunk 28.9% in November after a tumultuous month.

On Nov. 4, Penn National lost $2.69 billion in valuation after an earnings miss, the most the gambling company has lost from a stock decline in its 27-year history on the public markets, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

Additionally, allegations emerged against Dave Portnoy, founder of Penn-owned Barstool Sports, detailing occasions where he was aggressive and rough with women. According to the story from Business Insider, one woman who had intimate relations with Portnoy said she felt like she was a “human sex doll.” Another woman said she fought mental health issues like depression after their encounter.

Portnoy denied many of the allegations, calling them “jarring,” before adding that “cancel culture has been coming for me for a decade.”

Penn was also not chosen as an approved sports betting operator by the New York State Gaming Commission, and therefore cannot accepts legal wagers in the state.

Penn National Gaming is down 44.5% YTD.

Caesars

Shares of Caesars Entertainment Inc.
CZR,
+4.43%
 dropped 17.9% in November, joining other slumping sports betting stocks.

Caesars did get some good news however when it was selected as one of the nine approved sports betting operators in New York.

The New York State Gaming Commission also approved sports betting licenses for DraftKings, FanDuel, Bally Sports
BALY,
+2.99%,
BetMGM, PointsBet, WynnBet, Kambi and Resorts World.

Caesars is up 13.92% YTD.

Wynn

Shares of Wynn Resorts Ltd.
WYNN,
+5.77%
 dropped 9.9% in November amid news of the new Omicron variant of the coronavirus.

Wynn’s robust in-person casino business could be impacted by any new restrictions related to further outbreaks of COVID-19, especially in the tourist-heavy Las Vegas. Such volatility in the company’s stock was apparent in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

As stated above, Wynn’s online gaming organization WynnBet was recently approved for a sports betting license in New York.

Wynn is down 31.29% YTD.

MGM

Shares of MGM Resorts
MGM,
+5.01%
 dropped 16.56% in November after reporting a surprise profit for the company’s third quarter.

MGM also recently stated it intended to sell operations of The Mirage hotel and casino on Las Vegas Strip.

“We are committed to continuing to maintain and develop our existing Las Vegas portfolio with no plans for other changes on the Strip at this time,” Chief Executive Bill Hornbuckle said in a letter to employees. 

MGM Resorts is down 23.61% YTD.

The NFL season is one of the busiest times of the year for U.S. sportsbooks, and many states including Virginia and New Jersey have already set state betting records.

The Roundhill Sports Betting & iGaming ETF
BETZ,
+1.48%,
 a tier-weighted index of global sports-betting & iGaming companies, is down 26.06% over the past three months, compared with the S&P 500, which is up 0.66% over that same period.