Stocks were lower Tuesday as market participants looked for direction ahead of the Federal Reserve's final monetary policy decision of the year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell over 260 points, marking its longest losing streak since 1978 at nine sessions, while the S&P 500 Index and Nasdaq Composite lost nearly 0.4% and 0.3%, respectively.

Here's how the market settled on Tuesday:

S&P 500 Index (SPY  ): -0.39% or -23.47 points to 6,050.61

Dow Jones Industrial Average (DIA  ): -0.61% or -267.58 points to 43,449.90

Nasdaq Composite Index (QQQ  ): -0.32% or -64.83 points to 20,109.06

Moving Markets:

U.S. Retail Sales rose at a faster-than-expected rate in November as the U.S. holiday shopping season gets off to a strong start. Sales increased by 0.7% last month, the Commerce Department said Tuesday, higher than October's 0.5% gain. Notably, motor vehicle and auto part sales rose 1.8% annually, while e-commerce sales increased 1.4% year-over-year.

Sales excluding auto and gas rose by a less-than-expected 0.2%.

Wells Fargo senior economist Tim Quinlan wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday that while the report is a positive sign for retailers, there are some consumer spending headwinds expected into the new year.

"The potential for new tariffs at some point next year suggests some new price pressure," Quinlan wrote, quoted by Yahoo!finance. "We expect households to keep spending into the new year, but for the pace of consumption to slow as the year progresses and tariff-related price pressure bites. While the broad household sector is still in a decent financial position today, data suggest consumers are growing more vulnerable amid slowing real income growth and still-high financing costs."

In the News:

Pfizer (PFE  ) shares rose Tuesday after the pharmaceutical giant forecasted for 2025 adjusted profit to come between $2.80 to $3 per share on revenue in the range of $61 billion to $64 billion, coming in-line with market expectations and boosting outlooks as the company comes under fire from activist hedge fund Starboard Value.

The company also estimated a roughly $1 billion revenue impact from changes to Medicare's Part D prescription program under the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act. Pfizer noted that the addition of new manufacturer discounts and other changes would more than offset expected benefits from the $2,000 out-of-pocket spending cap for seniors under the prescription drug plan in 2025.

Salesforce (CRM  ) plans to hire 2,000 employees to sell artificial intelligence software to clients, CEO Marc Benioff said at a company event in San Francisco on Tuesday. Moreover, Benioff said the second generation of its Agentforce technology will become available to customers in February 2025.

"We're adding another couple thousand salespeople to help sell these products," Benioff said. "We already hed 9,000 referrals for the 2,000 positions that we've opened up. It's amazing."

For Wednesday:

All attention will be on the Federal Open Market Committee's monetary policy decision due out Wednesday afternoon, with policymakers broadly expected to issue another quarter-point interest rate cut.