On Friday, the markets closed low, with major stock price drops from C3is (CISS), Montana Technologies (AIRJ), and Adobe (ADBE).

The Dow Jones closed with a loss of 190 points, down 0.49%. S&P 500 closed with a drop of 0.65, and the Nasdaq Composite finished off Friday trading with a loss of 0.96%.

As the markets prepare for opening on Monday morning, we expect them to open low. There is no new major financial news to help push the stocks higher, but earnings reports from General Mills (GIS), Prudential (PUK), and BioNTech (BNTX) later in the week could drive the markets.

Market Expectations Moving Forward

The markets have been a little on the low side lately, with several major earnings reports coming in last week that did not bode well for their respective companies. Even when earnings were on par with expectations or slightly above expectations, if the forecast for the current quarter was not positive enough, we saw the stocks take a dive. This may continue to be the case as inflation remains high and the US economy is recovering very slowly.

With the Federal Reserve holding back on interest rate cuts due to the sluggish economy, it could be a while before we see major movement across a wide range of stock categories. Most investors are playing it very safe in the current market, with concerns about a technical recession and a decrease in the value of the US dollar.

We have seen a few stocks perform overwelled recently, particularly several tech stocks like Nvidia (NVDA) and Amazon (AMZN), which have made major gains and then retained those increases after the stock price movement slowed down. There has been some very positive movement from a few biomedical stocks, pharmaceutical stocks, and various tech stocks as well as entertainment stocks like Disney (DIS), which had a banner year in 2023 and is expected to do even better in 2024.