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Traders are bracing themselves ahead of a big week for the stock market.
Investors will be watching key data releases, including third-quarter GDP, an inflation update from the personal consumption expenditures index, and the October jobs report for clues about the state of the economy heading into year-end.
Importantly, the data points will be key inputs for the Federal Reserve's interest rate cuts. If the economy stays hot, the Fed could slow or even pause its easing cycle and spark a recalibration in markets that causes fresh volatility for stocks.
Meanwhile, five mega-cap tech firms worth a combined $12 trillion — Meta, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet — will report third-quarter earnings this week.
Here are the key inputs for markets to keep an eye on this week.
Earnings season is peaking this week, with more than 90 S&P 500 companies set to report including mega-cap giants Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet.
Together, those five companies are worth around $12 trillion.
Investors will watch the earnings reports closely, looking for signs of AI growth — and with it, signals that the tech bull run will continue into 2025.
Alphabet reports on Tuesday, followed by Microsoft and Meta on Wednesday.
For Meta, analysts expect strong growth amid a growing and stable core business. In a note last week, analysts at Bernstein said Meta is the new "set-it-and-forget-it" blue chip stock. The team raised their price target from $600 to $675 a share, representing potential upside of 16% from the price of the stock at midday on Monday.
Apple has an especially big week ahead. The iPhone maker reports on Thursday, and is also expected to unveil software and hardware updates this week, including access to highly-anticipated Apple Intelligence AI features with the iOS 18.1 update.
The earnings report follows a note last Wednesday from supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of TF International Securities that warned of weak demand for it's new iPhone 16 models. The note said there's no sign yet that Apple's coming AI capabilities have boosted demand for its devices.
Amazon will also report on Thursday. Deutsche Bank analysts expect strong results driven by operating income at the high end of guidance and higher operating income for next year.
The analysts see several sources of upside, including faster growth of total ad revenue given strength in its Prime Video segment, operating expenses for Amazon Web Services that come in below expectations, and other operating expenses growing more slowly due to the company's focus on efficiency and scaling robotics benefits.
In addition to the results themselves, investors will also be watching for clues about the strength of the AI trade.
All of the tech giants reporting this week, with the exception of Apple, are among Nvidia's biggest customers. With Nvidia's earnings not for another month, the third-quarter results and executive commentary will be important gauges of demand from the so-called "hyperscalers" driving the bulk of GPU sales.
Wedbush Securities analysts and tech bull Dan Ives described this week as the "world series for big tech." He predicts earnings results will come in strong, and send tech stocks higher into the end of the year.
"Investors need to see the monetization of AI spreading to the rest of the tech landscape and the next few weeks will be the linchpin to confirmation that the AI 'use case phase' have now begun within the enterprise world," Ives wrote in a note on Sunday.
The flurry of key data releases starts with third-quarter GDP on Wednesday.
Last week, stocks took a hit as the bond market sold off based on expectations for interest rates to remain higher for longer due to a strong economy, cautious comments from Fed officials, and rising odds of another Donald Trump presidency, which is widely seen as an inflationary event given his promises of high tariffs.
Depending on the data this week, there's renewed potential for the bond market to reprice and send shocks through the stock market as investors adjust rate expectations.
The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow Tracker expects 3.3% economic growth for the quarter, according to the tracker's most recent estimate on Friday. That's a high bar and would mark significant growth from last quarter's 3.0% growth.
A hot economy is a hurdle to aggressive rate cuts from the Fed, and could cause markets to reprice expectations for interest rates through the rest of this year and into 2025.
PCE is due Thursday and will be another input for the Fed as it nears its goal of 2% inflation. The Fed's preferred inflation gauge is expected to show prices rose 2.1% year-over-year in September, continuing its decline after coming in at 2.2% the prior month.
After a blockbuster September jobs report, the stakes are high for October's jobs data on Friday.
The data has become a double-edged sword for the market. If job growth remains high, that could reduce the need for more rate cuts. If the data is weaker than expected, that could prompt more rapid easing but also hint at a weakening economy.
Economists expect the data to show 110,000 jobs were added last month, far fewer than the 245,000 added in September.
JPMorgan analysts forecast a slightly more mild increase of 100,000 as recent storms and strikes weigh on job growth. That makes the report difficult to interpret, the analysts said.
"A decline in the unemployment rate would likely increase chatter around a Fed 'skip' in November, but barring an unexpectedly and remarkably strong set of data next week, we think it would take more months of good data before that possibility gets onto the Fed's radar," the analysts said in a note.
According to the CME FedWatch tool, markets expect the Fed to deliver 25 basis-point cuts at the November and December meetings.
