Stock Market Week Ahead: October CPI on Tuesday Is the Test After a Bruising Week

New York's market opens Monday with last week's damage still on the board and the week's biggest number still a day away. The Nasdaq Composite fell 3.37 percent last week and the S&P 500 lost 2.68 percent, a week that included the Nasdaq-100 futures' worst day since March 2020 on Thursday before a partial Friday rebound. What decides whether the slide deepens or steadies is scheduled, in order: October's Consumer Price Index on Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, a run of AI-linked earnings in the evenings, and producer prices on Friday.

The CPI is the hinge because it is the last inflation reading the Federal Reserve sees before its December 8-9 meeting. Forecasters expect October prices to rise 0.3 percent for the month, slowing from September's 0.6 percent, with core inflation at 0.2 percent, down from 0.3 percent. Futures markets price a December rate hike as more likely than not — roughly 70 to 80 percent depending on the source — after October's meeting was held at a range of 3.75 to 4.00 percent on a 10-2 vote, and a CPI print that misses in either direction can move that expectation sharply. Monday itself is thin: September wholesale inventories at 10 a.m. and a three-year Treasury auction at 1 p.m. are the day's scheduled items.

The company calendar is concentrated in the AI trade that drove last week's swings: CoreWeave reports Tuesday evening after the CPI, and Cisco and Applied Materials report Thursday evening, with New York Fed President John Williams speaking Thursday morning. Wednesday splits the markets — the bond market closes for Veterans Day while stocks and futures trade normal hours, which can make Wednesday's moves thinner than they look. Producer prices close the week Friday at 8:30 a.m. This desk will report each number as it lands; nothing in this file predicts any of them.