Stock market today: S&P 500 drops on tech wreck as focus shifts to Nvidia results

Investing.com -- The S&P 500 fell Tuesday, adding to recent losses as the selloff in tech continued just a day ahead of key earnings from Nvidia and a long-awaited labor market reading for September due later this week. 

At 4:00 p.m ET (21:00 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 498 points, or 1.1%, the S&P 500 index dropped 0.8%, and the NASDAQ Composite slipped 1.2%.  

Before Tuesday’s session, the broad-based S&P 500 was off more than 2% in November after notching gains for six straight months. The index is off by more than 3% from its recent all-time high, but the tech-heavy Nasdaq is worse off, down more than 5% from its record. 

Nvidia continues slide ahead of earnings;  Home Depot disappoints with Q3 earnings

Investors have continued to dump large technology shares amid caution ahead of Wednesday’s quarterly earnings from Nvidia. The company is at the heart of a massive AI-fueled valuation surge over the past three years, with questions over this ascent having emerged in recent months. 

Broader tech shares also fell amid growing doubts over the long-term prospects of AI, and the potential returns from the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in the industry.

Alphabet Inc Class A (NASDAQ:GOOGL), meanwhile, sidestepped the tech selloff after Google announced the next version of its AI model Gemini 3, with improving coding and search abilities.  

Cloudflare Inc (NYSE:NET) fell more than 1% after an outage at the company caused disruptions for major apps.  

Home Depot disappoints with Q3 earnings

Beyond Nvidia, earnings from major retailers, including Walmart (NYSE:WMT) and Target (NYSE:TGT), are due this week.

Home Depot (NYSE:HD) started the ball rolling this week, with the world’s largest home improvement retailer reporting third-quarter adjusted earnings that fell short of analyst expectations, despite posting revenue that exceeded forecasts.

The retailer updated its fiscal 2025 guidance to reflect third-quarter performance and continued challenges, now expecting total sales growth of approximately 3.0%, with comparable sales growth to be "slightly positive" for the comparable 52-week period.

Elsewhere, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) will open its annual developer conference in San Francisco, with markets eager for the software giant to unveil more details about its plans for rapid data center expansion to meet demand for AI computing power.

Nonfarm payrolls, inflation data coming soon

Away from the corporate sector, investors are also awaiting the release of key U.S. economic readings that were delayed by a prolonged government shutdown in October. 

Nonfarm payrolls data for September is due on Thursday, and will be closely watched for more insight into the labor market, which is a key consideration for the Federal Reserve.

Inflation data will also be on tap as the Department of Labor confirmed that the U.S. producer price index data will be released on Thursday. 

Fed Governor Waller said on Monday that the central bank should cut interest rates to prevent further deterioration in the sector. But these comments come amid waning bets that the Fed will cut interest rates in December.

The delay of several key labor and inflation readings will see the Fed flying mostly blind into its December meeting, making a hold more likely as the policymakers await concrete evidence to base their decisions on.

Markets are pricing in just over a 40% chance for a 25 basis point cut during the Fed’s Dec 10-11 meeting, down from 55.4% last week, CME Fedwatch showed.  

Peter Nurse, Ambar Warrick contributed to this article