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This could be the stock market's most important week of the year as investors await Nvidia's second-quarter earnings results on Wednesday, according to one Wall Street analyst.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives called the imminent Nvidia results the "most important tech earnings in years" in a note last week.
"We believe the most important week for the stock market this year and potentially in years for the Street will be next week as the Godfather of AI Jensen and Nvidia have earnings on deck," Ives said on Friday.
The results are so important because the stock market's booming AI trade hinges on Nvidia's GPU chips, with Ives calling it the "only game in town."
For Nvidia's stock to see a positive reaction on Wednesday, "the bulls needs to see enterprise demand on AI carry the torch to move this market higher led by tech," Ives explained.
But Deepwater Asset Management co-founder Gene Munster isn't expecting a rise in Nvidia stock following its earnings results this week.
In an interview with CNBC on Monday, Munster said there's a risk to Nvidia stock due to reported delays of its next-generation Blackwell GPU.
"I think that for investors who are just hyperfocused on every minute of what this company is doing, that could be viewed as a slight negative," Munster said of the reported Blackwell delays.
Additionally, Nvidia stock is up 30% over the last three weeks and is just 5% shy of its all-time high, so that could set the stock up to tumble if the earnings report isn't a showstopper, according to Munster.
"I think this Blackwell piece is probably the most important x-factor about the quarter, and so that's why I think the stock is going to trade down modestly," Munster said.
Munster added: "I think this is going to probably be a more difficult week for big tech, but I think that ultimately shares are going to recover quickly as investors come to grips with what I think is a stronger AI trade than what many believe is today."
Treasury Partners CIO Richard Saperstein said in an email on Monday that Nvidia remains "an important component" and that its earnings reports will always be a "cliffhanger."
"The bar remains high for Nvidia to demonstrate that AI spending is continuing at a torrent pace," Saperstein said.
Aside from Nvidia, earnings results from Salesforce on Wednesday will be another important data point for investors to consider.
"We believe based on our recent checks [Salesforce] will have a bounce back quarter with some headwinds remaining, but ultimately speak to a tech spending environment that is generally healthy with AI deployments/use cases front and center driving larger deals," Ives said.
In addition to earnings, investors will closely monitor data releases later this week that will impact the future path of the Federal Reserve's interest rate cuts.
Investors will get more insight into the current state of the jobs market on Thursday with the weekly release of initial jobless claims, while the path of inflation will be showcased with the Friday morning release of the PCE Index, which is considered to be the Fed's preferred inflation gauge.
While the Fed is largely expected to make its first interest rate cuts at its September FOMC Meeting, there is still uncertainty as to whether it will be a 25-basis point or 50-basis point rate cut.
All-in, investors are navigating a big week for stocks as the market closes out the summer — and it's starting with a bang as the Dow Jones Industrial Average notched fresh record highs Monday morning.
