Stock Market Today: Stocks Slump Ahead of Tech Earnings, Fed Meeting

Stocks closed lower Monday as caution set in ahead of a busy week on Wall Street. 

In addition to a jam-packed earnings calendar that features trillion-dollar tech titans Apple (AAPL) and Alphabet (GOOGL), there's a full economic docket too – one that includes a Fed meeting and the monthly jobs report. 

"This week's big tech earnings will enable investors to learn whether or not the economy is slowing and investors will see which companies are strong enough to weather the potential for tough times, and which companies will struggle," says David Trainer, CEO of investment research firm New Constructs. "We expect the stock market to be more discerning as it awards the stronger companies with more value, while sending the stocks of weaker companies lower, a dynamic that sounds simple, but didn't occur in 2020 and 2021."

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Ahead of this busy batch of tech earnings, the Nasdaq Composite underperformed today, shedding 2.0% to 11,393. The S&P 500 gave back 1.3% to 4,017, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.8% to 33,717.

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Investors are also keeping a close eye on this week's gathering of Federal Reserve officials. For those who have been wondering, "when is the next Fed meeting," the answer to that question is tomorrow, though the policy announcement is not due until Wednesday afternoon. 

Wall Street expects the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to hike its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points (0.25%). The tone of this meeting will likely be similar to the December one, says Jonathan Pingle, economist at UBS Global Research: "A smaller rate hike as the terminal rate nears, a Fed more confident inflation is peaking, but also an FOMC that thinks it is too soon to signal a stop."

Meanwhile, Pingle anticipates "a very solid gain" in the January jobs report, which will be released Friday morning. And this, he adds, "should keep more rate hikes in play." 

The Best AI Stocks to Buy

Today's price action from tech stocks marks a change of pace to what has so far been a hot stretch for the beaten-down sector. "The script has been flipped in 2023," say Adam Turnquist, chief technical strategist, and Jeffrey Buchbinder, chief equity strategist at LPL Financial. "Last year's underperformers have turned into outperformers this year, driving the S&P 500 Index up [roughly] 5% this month." And the Nasdaq is up nearly 9% after plunging more than 33% in 2022. 

Turnquist and Buchbinder add that several seasonality indicators – including the Santa Claus rally and the fact that we're in the third year of a presidential cycle, which tends to be bullish for stocks – "suggest the path of least resistance for the broader market is likely higher for the year." The longer-term selloff in tech certainly creates opportunities for investors to scoop up some of the best growth stocks at a bargain. Artificial intelligence (AI) companies, in particular, are poised for impressive growth over the next decade – and that should mean great things for Wall Street's best AI stocks.