Stocks look set to rebound this morning after their two-day skid, as some traders gripe about Mr. Market’s aimless action lately.

“We find ourselves in a fairly bland market,” says CrackedMarket’s Jani Ziedins, who views last week’s dip and this week’s gain as “equally unemotional.”

“The unfortunate thing for us is these small moves don’t give us a lot to trade,” he writes.

Ziedins also cheerily notes that this “half-full” market remains robustly optimistic and is ignoring every reason it should sell off, even as Congress, Trump, the Fed, Britain, France, Syria, Russia and North Korea “have all given us reasons to be cautious.”

Here’s something that really has been moving: Amazon.com’s stock AMZN, -1.38% , up about 20% for the year vs. the S&P’s 3% gain.

And the e-commerce juggernaut will keep running higher, according to our call of the day, which comes from Scott Galloway, founder of marketing company L2 and an NYU professor.

“I think Amazon is going to say to a series of households, ‘Tell you what: You don’t need any other retailer. We’re it,’” Galloway says.

“The company is going to announce that those households are going to quintuple or sextuple in purchase volume, and the stock’s going to become the first $1 trillion market cap company in the history of business.”

Galloway — not the first prognosticator to cry “AMZN $1T” — offers other ways in which Amazon is triumphing and “dismantling” the retail sector XRT, +0.03% .

He says Jeff Bezos & Co. have declared war on conventional brands, changed the relationship between a company and its shareholders, and deployed Alexa (its voice service/digital assistant) in clever ways.

“Alexa and Amazon have conspired and figured out that voice is a way to pull brand and some of the traditional mechanisms and accoutrements of brand-building out of the ecosystem, and then slowly but surely take control of your preferences,” says Galloway, who earlier this year blasted Snap Inc.’s SNAP, -1.87% IPO. Amazon is giving people a discount on laundry detergent and other products when they order through Alexa, he notes.

Here is his full breakdown, which has generated buzz and drawn more than 109,000 views so far:

See:From a risk-of-bankruptcy standpoint, the retail business is the new oil and gas

And read:Amazon is going to kill more American jobs than China did

Key market gauges

Futures for the Dow US:YMM7 , S&P 500 US:ESM7 and Nasdaq-100 US:NQM7 are higher. That’s after the Dow DJIA, -0.08% and S&P SPX, -0.44% closed lower for a second straight day, while Nasdaq Composite COMP, -0.72% bucked the negative trend.

Oil US:CLM7 is roughly flat, having given up gains that followed news that OPEC might extend output cuts. It’s down about 4% for the week.

See the Market Snapshot column for the latest action.

The chart

Energy stocks XLE, -0.70% are now down since Election Day, notes Charlie Bilello at Pension Partners. He has a heap of charts that all basically show the same thing: so-called Trump trades unraveling.

“One by one, as the post-election moves reversed course, the false narratives were exposed,” Bilello writes. “You don’t have to play such games at all, for learning to ignore the narrative noise is a far more valuable skill.”

Read:Energy stocks take a hit as crude-oil prices slump

And see:The market is beginning to price in the death of Trump’s tax reform

The buzz

American Express AXP, +1.00% , eBay EBAY, -0.04% , Qualcomm QCOM, -2.04% and CSX CSX, +0.98% are moving premarket after their results late yesterday, while Travelers TRV, +0.32% and Verizon VZ, +0.26% are among the companies that posted earnings before the open.

“Vix VIX, -3.74% is like a guy who’s getting divorced and losing his job, but is still coming in to work. He’s sitting there seemingly calmly, doing his job, but beneath the surface the stress is there,” one analyst told the FT.

Exxon XOM, -1.78% wants a waiver from the U.S. to resume its Russian oil projects.

Sinclair Broadcast Group SBGI, -2.27% might buy Tribune Media Co. US:TRCO

The stat

Protesters run away from tear gas canisters thrown by police in Caracas on Wednesday. Getty Images

Nearly 2,700 workers and 79 car dealers — That is GM’s GM, -0.67% footprint in Venezuela, and it could be history as the auto maker said it’s halting operations in the country after authorities there took over its plant. Meanwhile, at least three people have been killed amid protests against President Nicolas Maduro’s regime.

The quote

“Some other media outlet is going to pick him up and syndicate what he does. He’s a brand on his own, as you can tell from all the best-selling books he’s got.” — Tom Hollihan, a USC professor, doesn’t expect Bill O’Reilly will slip quietly away after Fox News fired him in the wake of a sexual-harassment scandal.

The economy

Readings on jobless claims and the Philly Fed index came in below forecasts before the opening bell. Leading indicators are due to hit once trading is underway.

Check out:MarketWatch’s Economic Calendar

On the Federal Reserve front, Fed Gov. Jerome Powell said he’s open to adjusting post-crisis banking regulations.

Random reads

Your Bose headphones are spying on you, according to this lawsuit.

The origins of 4/20, marijuana’s high holiday.

This fashionable bag is like Ikea’s blue tote, but costs $2,145.

UC Berkeley canceled Ann Coulter’s event. She’s vowed to go ahead anyway.

Payments startup’s founder is among Time’s 100 most influential people.

How autonomous cars are already big in Japan:

Aging drivers propel self-driving technology in Japan

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