The S&P 500 inched lower Monday as the market failed to bounce back following Friday’s steep selloff.
The broad market index ticked down 0.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average down 22 points.Meanwhile, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite declined 0.95%.
The moves follow the stock market’s fall on Thursday and Friday to end the week in the red. The Dow finished down 2.51% for its worst weekly performance since October. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq slipped 1.66% and 2.51%, respectively, for the week. On Friday alone, the Dow dropped more than 700 points, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq shed 1.7% and 2.2%.
Those declines came after February data raised concern over the state of the U.S. economy. Purchasing managers’ index numbers showed the U.S. services sector contracted for the month, while the widely followed University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index came in weaker than expected.
The week ahead includes key readings on corporate earnings and the economy. Earnings reports from Home Depot and Lowe’s on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, will give investors a better sense of how U.S. consumers are faring. Nvidia’s earnings report on Wednesday evening could be even more impactful, as the artificial intelligence-linked chipmaker is still one of the biggest stocks by market cap.
This will be Nvidia’s first earnings report since the emergence of the DeepSeek large language model from China that cast doubt on the sustainability of the AI trade.
“It’s definitely one of the top things that the markets will be looking at [this] week. They really want to see whether the DeepSeek news ... is solid in terms of disrupting these types of companies’ margins in the future,” said Lale Akoner, global market analyst at eToro.
Then Friday will deliver the January reading of the personal consumption expenditures index, which is the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation.
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