5 things to know before the Friday open: Fed visit, Intel spending cuts, more meme stocks

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

1. Butting heads

President Donald Trump’s highly anticipated visit to the Federal Reserve on Thursday included an attention-grabbing back-and-forth with Chairman Jerome Powell. It was a sight to behold: Trump and Powell wore white hard hats as they toured an area of the central bank under construction — a project that has been a talking point of the president’s as he’s criticized Powell. As Trump told reporters that renovations of two buildings were costing around $3.1 billion, Powell began shaking his head. Powell said he had not heard that from anyone at the Fed and, after being handed a sheet of paper, explained that the figure included another building’s work from years prior. On a friendlier note, Trump insinuated he was leaving behind the idea of firing Powell, a possibility that’s concerned investors in recent months. CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger laid out the entire scene, which marked the first official visit of a president to the Fed in nearly two decades.

2. More all-time highs

3. Spending intel

Intel CEO CEO Lip-Bu Tan announced several spending cuts in a Thursday memo, particularly focused on a division called foundry that produces chips for other companies. Tan put it rather plainly, saying that there would be “no more blank checks” and that investments “must make economic sense.” As CNBC’s Kif Leswing explained, this arm of the business has an operating loss and is in need of a large, centerfold customer. The belt-tightening already appears to be in motion, per Tan: Intel has axed planned fab projects and is consolidating some operations abroad, as well as slowing the construction timeline for a chip factory in Ohio.

4. Clock’s ticking

After kicking the can down the road for ByteDance to divest from the U.S. business of social media app TikTok, the White House is trying to — literally — lay down the law. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC on Thursday that it will be lights out for the short-form video platform beloved by Gen Z if it cannot find American owners by the Sept. 17 deadline. Users got a taste of this scenario in January, when Apple and Google removed the platform from their app stores as a prior deadline loomed. On the old economy side of things, Lutnick told CNBC that the major U.S. automakers are “cool with” the trade agreement forged with Japan.

5. Nobody but Sydney