Stocks were mostly unchanged on Tuesday as traders looked ahead towards another key U.S. inflation reading following Monday's low trading volumes. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped slightly lower after falling as much as 320 points at session lows, while the S&P 500 Index and Nasdaq Composite advanced about 0.1% and 0.3% in afternoon trading.
Here's how the market settled on Tuesday:
S&P 500 Index (NYSE: SPY): +0.14% or +7.52 points to 5,209.91
Dow Jones Industrial Average (NYSE: DIA): -0.02% or -9.13 points to 38,883.67
Nasdaq Composite Index (NASDAQ: QQQ): +0.32% or +52.68 points to 16,306.64
Zoom In:
Market participants are trading cautiously ahead of March's consumer price index reading due out Wednesday morning, with economists polled by Dow Jones expecting inflation to rise by 0.3% month-to-month. This key report will impact the Federal Reserve's timeline for interest rate cuts this year, with more optimistic traders hoping the first of multiple potential cuts to start in June.
Tuesday's session follows the slowest trading day of the year so far on Monday, with New York Stock Exchange volumes fall to about 7.99 billions shares on the day due to widespread excitement about the solar eclipse throughout the United States.
Zoom Out:
Despite the broader tech sector declines in recent sessions, strategist at UBS believe the artificial intelligence market has room to grow, especially beyond GPU computing capabilities that have driven Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) up over 200% in the past year to include software firms.
"In our view, the semiconductor and software industries offer the best opportunities for investors over the course of this year," UBS strategist said in a Tuesday note.
In the News:
Boeing (NYSE: BA) saw a drop in first quarter deliveries on Tuesday as the aerospace manufacturer remains impacted by scrutiny from regulators and airlines after a door plug flew off mid-flight on an Alaska Airlines (NYSE: ALK) flight back in January. The company delivered over 83 planes in the three months ended March 31, compared with 157 deliveries in the previous quarter and 130 planes in the first quarter of 2023.
Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG) unveiled new custom Arm-based (NASDAQ: ARM) server chip on Tuesday, with the tech giant announcing the new processor will be available later this year at its Cloud Next conference in Las Vegas.
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) also unveiled its latest AI chip on Tuesday, called Gaudi 3. The new chip is over twice as power-efficient as and can run generative AI models over one times faster than Nvidia's H100 GPU, the company said.
"From our competitive pricing, our distinctive open integrated network on chip, we're using industry-standard Ethernet. We believe it's a strong offering," said Das Kamhout, vice president of Xeon software at Intel, on a call with reporters quoted by CNBC. Kamhout added that Intel expects the chip to be "highly competitive" with Nvidia's latest offerings.
For Wednesday:
All eyes will be on March's CPI report as well as the minutes for the Fed's March FOMC meeting on Wednesday for more clues on the central bank's next moves on rates. Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) will also kick off the second-quarter earnings season Wednesday morning.