Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:
1. Lethargic
The S&P 500 eked out a small gain Tuesday, rising 0.16% to post the index’s third winning session. The Nasdaq Composite, meanwhile, added 0.46% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was barely higher, gaining just 4.18 points, or 0.01%. Investors will continue to watch for more data this week, including reports on gross domestic product and personal consumption expenditures. Follow live market updates.
2. Lost confidence
A customer shops for produce at a grocery store on Jan. 15, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois.
Scott Olson | Getty Images
Consumers aren’t feeling very confident. The Conference Board’s confidence index of current conditions slipped further in March, marking the fourth consecutive monthly contraction. But the measure that shows how consumers are feeling about the future hit the lowest reading in 12 years, dropping to 65.2. That’s well below the 80 level that’s considered a signal for a recession ahead. Adding to the bad vibes, the outlook for the stock market slid sharply, and just 37.4% of respondents said they expected higher equity prices in the next year.
3. Creative call
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy speaks during an Amazon Devices launch event in New York City, U.S., February 26, 2025.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
Amazon is diving more into generative artificial intelligence. The e-commerce site recently began testing a beta version of a shopping chatbot called “Interests AI” that prompts users to describe an interest in their own words and generates a curated list of shopping products based on what they enter. It’s separate from the regular search bar on Amazon. The company is also testing another chatbot called “Health AI” that can answer questions about health and wellness, “provide common care options for health care needs,” and suggest products.
4. Business hours
Traders work at the post where GameStop is traded on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., June 12, 2024.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Video game retailer GameStop is planning to use corporate cash to buy bitcoin. It follows a similar decision from software company MicroStrategy, now known as Strategy, to buy billions of dollars worth of bitcoin. GameStop’s crypto investment is the latest move by CEO Ryan Cohen to revive the struggling business. The meme stock rose 17% in premarket trading Wednesday.
5. Google slice
Sundar Pichai with one of Google’s Quantum Computers in the Santa Barbara lab, California, in October 2019.
Handout . | Reuters
One of Google‘s top executives thinks the company is moving closer to achieving a dream physicists and scientists have had since the 1980s. Julian Kelly, Google Quantum AI’s director of hardware, told CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa that a quantum computer is only five years away from running practical applications that today’s computers can’t handle. Quantum tech, which could be able to produce cutting-edge physics and even possibly generate new kinds of data, has drawn more attention since Google announced a breakthrough in December that it said suggested a path to working quantum computers.
— CNBC’s Pia Singh, Jeff Cox, Annie Palmer, Yun Li and Kif Leswing contributed to this report.
