Stocks nearly recovered after a hotter-than-expected inflation report sent the market lower on Tuesday.
For the week, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) closed down 0.4% but cracked a fresh record-high close on Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) slipped 0.1% for the week. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) fell 1.3%.
Markets were closed on Monday for the Presidents’ Day holiday.
With few economic events on the calendar expected to severely sway investor sentiment, the earnings report from AI darling Nvidia on Wednesday after the market close will take center stage in the week ahead. Reports from Walmart (WMT), Home Depot (HD), Moderna (MRNA), and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) will also be in focus throughout the week.
The growing economic consensus has hit a bump in the road.
Over the past several months, a string of stronger-than-expected data had many investors embracing a possible soft landing, in which inflation would fall to the Federal Reserve’s 2% target without a severe economic downturn.
Recent data over the past week has challenged that narrative. Both the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Index (PPI) showed prices increased more than economists projected in the last month. And the January retail sales report showed sales dropped by more than economists had expected. In other words, neither inflation nor consumer spending improved.
“While January data are often noisy, the inflation data do suggest that disinflation took two steps back in January,” Bank of America US economists Stephen Juneau and Michael Gapen wrote in a note to clients on Friday.
Juneau and Gapen wrote that the January inflation data vindicates the Fed’s “wait-and-see approach” to cutting interest rates and that they agree with the new market consensus that the first interest rate cut will come in June rather than March or May.
Read more: What the Fed rate decision means for bank accounts, CDs, loans, and credit cards
This marks a stark shift in sentiment on Fed rate cuts. Investors are now pricing in a roughly 35% chance the first cut comes in May, per the CME FedWatch Tool. A month ago, investors had placed a 97% chance that the first cut would come by the end of the May meeting.
Perhaps the most important earnings report of the fourth quarter reporting season is slated to hit the tape on Wednesday after the closing bell. The chipmaker’s lead in AI has propelled it to the third-highest market cap in the world, only trailing Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT).
Since a blowout earnings report last May when Nvidia topped Wall Street’s estimates for revenue guidance by more than 50%, the company has consistently topped analysts’ expectations. And many on Wall Street expect another blowout quarter. Consensus projects Nvidia to report earnings per share of $4.60 and revenue of $20.36 billion. That would mark year-over-year growth of 422% and 236%, respectively.
For a stock that has already rallied almost 50% this year, the risk for investors lies in if the company’s string of hefty beats finally ends. And given Nvidia’s outsized weighting in the major indexes and its value in the AI story, it could be a risk to the broader market too.
Interactive Brokers chief strategist Steve Sosnick told Yahoo Finance’s Madison Mills that the report could be “very difficult” for markets.
“If Nvidia misses or just fails to hit a home run … that can have a gravitational effect on the whole market,” Sosnick said.
Nvidia’s earnings are a reminder that while the recent string of economic data provided some challenges to the soft-landing narrative, the overall market story has changed little in recent weeks. Stocks have stomached unsatisfying news, with the S&P 500 hitting fresh highs despite a shift in investor expectations from the rate cut cycle starting in March to the cycle beginning in June.
AI stocks are still shooting higher as enthusiasm remains plentiful for the new technology (see the 150% one-month gain in Super Micro Computer (SMCI) for the latest example). And a look under the surface shows that the fundamental story for stocks has held up too.
The latest data from FactSet, released on Friday, shows that with nearly 80% of S&P 500 companies done reporting earnings, the index is pacing for earnings growth of 3.2% in the fourth quarter. That number has been moving up steadily in recent weeks as more companies report.
As we’ve been noting, earnings beats have come across sectors too, which many believe could lead to a broadening of market returns beyond just a few top tech stocks later this year. Recent research from Truist co-CIO Keith Lerner pointed out that, since the market’s recent bottom in late October, a broadening has been underway.
“The market rally that we have seen since October is broader than many investors give it credit for,” Lerner wrote in a note to clients on Thursday night.
This played out in the most recent week of trading with the equal-weighted S&P 500 (RSP) and the small-cap Russell 2000 Index (^RUT) — two indexes commonly referenced by market strategists who think the stock market rally will extend beyond the few stocks currently leading the charge. Both rose more than 0.7%. The S&P 500 fell about 0.4%.
These signs of a market shift come as Renaissance Macro head of economics Neil Dutta pointed out several times this week that the soft-landing market narrative still remains in play. And that is largely because the macro conversation hasn’t changed, Dutta added.
“We’re still talking about an economy that is growing reasonably well and a central bank that is thinking about when it will cut rates,” Dutta wrote. “A recalibration of policy is still likely this year.”
