Dow 50,000 sets table for inflation data, delayed January jobs report: What to watch this week
As investors turn toward the coming week, Wall Street will look to build on Friday's sharp turnaround into the green as investors process the drastic software and crypto sell-off.
Wall Street will look to build on a dramatic Friday turnaround that saw the Dow Jones Industrial (^DJI) close above 50,000 for the first time, while a 2% daily rally in the S&P 500 (^GSPC) and Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) indexes wiped away some of the pain felt earlier in the week. When the closing bell rang on Friday, the tech-heavy Nasdaq still logged its fourth straight losing week, falling nearly 3%, as investor concerns over AI-related disruption across software names, specifically, predominated across most of the trading action. With a weekly loss, the S&P 500 has also dropped in three out of the last four weeks.
Both the Dow and S&P 500 are up for the year; the Nasdaq this week forfeited its year-to-date gains. In the week ahead, the delayed January jobs report is set to be released on Wednesday. Economists expect 70,000 nonfarm payroll jobs were created last month while the unemployment rate held steady at 4.4%. Friday will also bring investors key inflation data, with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) expected to show prices rose 0.3% over last month and 2.5% over the prior year. The jobs report — delayed by five days due to the brief government shutdown that ended on Feb.
3 — comes as signs the US labor market remains on shaky ground appeared last week. ADP reported on Feb. 4 that private employers added just 22,000 jobs in January, about half of what economists expected. The BLS's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), released Thursday, showed job openings in December sank to the lowest level since the throes of the pandemic in 2020, while data from global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas showed layoff announcements in January hit the highest level for the month since 2009. "The low-hire, low-fire dynamic that has dominated the labor market for much of the past year continued to generally hold in December, with layoffs remaining low and unemployment actually declining slightly," Indeed senior economist Cory Stahle wrote in an email on Thursday.
"But the small pockets of strength that had been buoying the market appear to be fading quickly." On the corporate calendar in the week ahead, Coca-Cola (KO), McDonald's (MCD), Cisco (CSCO), and ON Semiconductor (ON) will be among the notable names to report. Job seekers listen for information on employment during a hiring fair at Fair Park in Dallas, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero) · ASSOCIATED PRESS 'I have never seen sentiment this negative' Even with Friday's furious rally, it was a tough week for the stock market, with markets reaching both price and sentiment lows on Thursday.
"Another day, another set of declines in popular financial assets," Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, wrote in a client note on Thursday. Story Continues "Unfortunately, there is nothing new about that. What is different this time ... is that [Thursday] is less about rotation than outright selling." Sosnick noted that on Thursday, the number of stocks that fell was sharply higher than those that rose in the S&P 500, a contrast with trading on the week's first three days, when more stocks actually advanced than declined. “Net net, I have never seen sentiment this negative in any group in my career,” Michael Toomey, an equity trader at Jefferies, wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday.
"I think we’re due for a vicious rally in software." Friday's rally was strong, but likely just the start of something that would add up to that vicious characterization. The iShares software ETF (IGV) ended the week down a cumulative 8.7%, bringing its performance for the year so far to a loss of 23%. Nvidia (NVDA) gained almost 8% to cap the week, but hyperscalers Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG), and Meta (META) all lost ground in the week's final trading session. With these three companies — along with Microsoft (MSFT) — committing to some $650 billion in AI spending during their earnings calls over the last two weeks, investors are still facing the prospect that AI disruptions both to industries and the strategic plans of some of the market's most important names remain early.
"The key word for every tech release right now is 'CAPEX,'" Capital.com analyst Kyle Rodda wrote in a client note on Thursday, saying investor fears have been "inflamed ... about whether the extra dollar of spend is going to yield the earnings necessary to justify current valuations." Amazon CEO Andy Jassy speaks during a keynote address on Dec. 3, 2024, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services) · Noah Berger via Getty Images 'It's where the math takes us' Like the software sector, cryptocurrency also fell deep into the throes of a drawdown through the week that left bulls reeling before a kick save on Friday.
Between Wednesday and Thursday, bitcoin (BTC-USD) fell 12% to wipe out all of its Trump-era gains and trade under $65,000 at the afternoon's lows. At the same time, a spate of crypto-exposed stocks, including Strategy (MSTR), Robinhood (HOOD), and Coinbase (COIN), logged double-digit sell-offs before a steep recovery on Friday. Not helping the matter were earnings released Thursday by Michael Saylor's Strategy, where investors learned that the company swallowed a $17.4 billion operating loss in the quarter, far exceeding the $1 billion loss in the same quarter a year earlier. A surge o
n Friday saw bitcoin retake the $70,000 level, but sentiment in crypto remained more consistent with commentary that got shared far and wide on X earlier in the week, when Richard Farr, chief market strategist at Pivotus Partners, announced that his firm had pegged its price target for bitcoin at $0, arguing that the digital currency had failed as a "dollar hedge" and remained purely a speculative asset. "That's not just for shock factor. It's where the math takes us," Farr wrote. "It's not worked as a dollar hedge, rather it's just a speculative instrument correlated to the Nasdaq. It's not gaining any traction as medium of exchange.
No serious central bank will ever own something where Michael Saylor controls the float." In a client memo, Interactive Brokers' Sosnick noted that as bitcoin fell, precious metals gold (GC=F) and silver (SI=F) surged. When investors saw weakness, they jumped ship, sending bitcoin tumbling. "My comment, 'Bitcoin is now for normies,' applies," Sosnick wrote. "The post-election run-up in crypto was powered not by 'HODL’ers,' but by average investors ... who used ETFs to hop onto the momentum. When the momentum faded, they moved to metals. We’re seeing the logical outcome of that wild rotation." For a look at where bitcoin and other digital currencies are heading, investors could see big swings if Congress passes the CLARITY Act, CoinDesk Indices managing director Andy Baehr told Yahoo Finance.
The act, which would establish a firm regulatory framework for digital assets, passed the House of Representatives in July 2025 and is now proceeding in Senate committee deliberations. Its passage "would be a fantastic catalyst, probably the largest catalyst for crypto," Baehr said, but "right now, there's really not a lot of market-based hope that CLARITY would happen." MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor speaks at the Bitcoin 2021 Convention on June 4, 2021, in Miami, Fla. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) · Joe Raedle via Getty Images Economic and earnings calendar Monday Economic data: New Y
ork Fed 1-year inflation expectation, January (+3.42% previously) Earnings calendar: Apollo Global Management (APO), Becton Dickinson (BDX), Arch Capital Group (ACGL), ORIX Corporation (IX), Cincinnati Financial (CINF), ON Semiconductor (ON), Loews (L), Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF), Vornado Realty Trust (VNO), monday.com (MNDY) Tuesday Economic data: NFIB small business optimism, January (99.5 expected, 99.5 previously); ADP weekly employment change, week ended Jan. 24 (7,750 previously); Retail sales advance, month-on-month, December (+0.4% expected, +0.6% previously); Retail sales ex auto, mont
h-on-month, December (+0.4% expected, +0.5% previously); Retail sales ex auto and gas, December (+0.5% expected, +0.4% previously) Earnings calendar: AstraZeneca (AZN), Coca-Cola (KO), Gilead Sciences (GILD), S&P Global (SPGI), Welltower (WELL), BP (BP), CVS Health (CVS), Duke Energy (DUK), Barclays (BCS), Marriott International (MAR), Spotify (SPOT), The Williams Companies (WMB), Robinhood (HOOD), Ferrari (RACE), Cloudflare (NET), Ford (F), Edwards Lifesciences (EW), Honda (HMC), Datadog (DDOG), Xylem (XYL), Fiserv (FISV), Fidelity National Information Services (FIS), Zillow (Z, ZG), Hasbro (HAS), Lattice Semiconductor (LSCC), Aramark (ARMK) Wednesday Economic data: MBA mortgage applications, week ended Feb.
6 (-8.9% previously); Change in nonfarm payrolls, January (+70,000 expected, +50,000 previously); Change in private payrolls, January (+75,000 expected, +37,000 previously); Change in manufacturing payrolls, January (-7,000 expected, -8,000 previously); Average hourly earnings, month-on-month, January (+0.3% expected, +0.3% previously); Average hourly earnings, year-on-year, January (+3.7% expected, +3.8% previously); Unemployment rate, January (+4.4% expected, +4.4% previously) Earnings calendar: Cisco (CSCO), McDonald's (MCD), T-Mobile (TMUS), TotalEnergies (TTE), Shopify (SHOP), AppL
ovin (APP), Equinix (EQIX), Hilton Worldwide (HLT), Motorola (MSI), Vertiv Holdings (VRT), Manulife Financial (MFC), Waste Connections (WCN), Westinghouse Air Brake (WAB), Sun Life Financial (SLF), Kraft Heinz (KHC), Ameren (AEE), Royalty Pharma (RPRX), Curtiss-Wright (CW), Humana (HUM), GlobalFoundries (GFS), Albemarle (ALB), Tenet Healthcare (THC), Tower Semiconductor (TSEM), Antero Resources (AR) Thursday Economic data: Initial jobless claims, week ended Feb. 7 (231,000 previously); Continuing claims, week ended Jan. 31 (1.84 million previously); Existing home sales, January (4.24 million
expected, 4.35 million previously) Earnings calendar: Applied Materials (AMAT), Arista Networks (ANET), Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD), British American Tobacco (BTI), Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX), Brookfield Corporation (BN), Agnico Eagle Mines (AEM), Airbnb (ABNB), American Electric Power (AEP), CBRE Group (CBRE), Ambev (ABEV), Exelon Corporation (EXC), Entergy Corporation (ETR), Coinbase (COIN), PG&E Corporation (PCG), Restaurant Brands International (QSR), Expedia (EXPE), TELUS Corporation (TU), Rivian Automotive (RIVN), Toast (TOST), Hyatt Hotels (H), Pinterest (PINS), DraftKings (DKNG), R
oku (ROKU), Wynn Resorts (WYNN), Maplebear (CART), Dutch Bros (BROS), Morningstar (MORN), Birkenstock (BIRK) Friday Economic data: Consumer price index, month-on-month, January (+0.3% expected, +0.3% previously); Core CPI, month-on-month, January (0.3% expected, +0.2% previously); CPI, year-on-year, January (+2.5% expected, +2.7% expected); Core CPI, year-on-year, January (+2.5% expected, +2.6% expected); Real average hourly earnings, year-on-year, January (+1.1% previously) Earnings calendar: Enbridge (ENB), NatWest Group (NWG), TC Energy Corporation (TRP), Cameco (CCJ), Moderna (MRNA), Magna International (MGA), Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT), Advance Auto Parts (AAP), The Wendy's Company (WEN) StockStory aims to help individual investors beat the market.
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