Stock Market Today: Stocks Close Lower After Fed Minutes

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published 21 November 2023

Stocks opened in negative territory Tuesday and stayed there through the close. Volume is beginning to thin out as investors get a head start on their long weekend. Remember, the stock market will be closed Thursday for Thanksgiving and open for an abbreviated session on Black Friday.

When Tuesday's closing bell rang, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was off 0.2% at 35,088, the S&P 500 was 0.2% lower at 4,538, and the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.6% at 14,199.

In focus today was data from the National Association of Realtors that showed existing home sales fell 4.1% from September to October to a seasonally adjusted rate of 3.79 million. Year-over-year, existing home sales were down 14.6%. Meanwhile, the median sales price for existing homes was up 3.4% from the same period last year.

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"Prospective home buyers experienced another difficult month due to the persistent lack of housing inventory and the highest mortgage rates in a generation," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, in the report.

In other economic news, the Federal Reserve released the minutes from its November meeting when it chose to keep interest rates unchanged. The minutes showed "most participants continued to see upside risks to inflation," while "all" Fed officials agreed it was best to "proceed carefully."

Since the Fed's most recent meeting, both the October Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Index (PPI) showed inflation is easing. As such, futures traders are pricing in a 99.8% chance for no rate hike at the next Fed meeting in December, according to CME Group.

Retail earnings a mixed bag ahead of Black Friday

Market participants also took in a mixed bag of retail earnings. Burlington Stores (BURL), for one, shot up 20.7% after the off-price retailer reported higher-than-expected third-quarter earnings of 98 cents per share. Revenue of $2.29 billion matched estimates.

Kohl's (KSS), on the other hand, slumped 8.6% after its third-quarter results. While the department store beat on both its top and bottom lines, same-store sales fell by a wider-than-expected 5.5% and the company lowered its full-year sales growth forecast.

AI stock can soar 40%, says analyst

In non-earnings news, Oppenheimer analyst Timothy Horan upgraded enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) software firm C3.ai (AI, +1.7%) to Outperform from Perform, the equivalents of Buy and Hold, respectively.

The company's "'AI' theme is real and durable, with C3.ai well-positioned as one of the few pure plays helping customers drive new revenue sources and major productivity improvements," the analyst says. AI is already up more than 150% for the year-to-date, but Horan has a $40 price target on the tech stock. This implies upside of more than 40% to current levels.

Investors will hear more about artificial intelligence when Nvidia (NVDA, -0.9%) releases its third-quarter results after tonight's close. Analysts are expecting solid top- and bottom-line growth for one of Wall Street's best AI stocks.

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With over a decade of experience writing about the stock market, Karee Venema is the senior investing editor at Kiplinger.com. She joined the publication in April 2021 after 10 years of working as an investing writer and columnist at Schaeffer's Investment Research. In her previous role, Karee focused primarily on options trading, as well as technical, fundamental and sentiment analysis.