5 things you should know before the stock market opens on Monday

Here are the key news investors need to start their trading day:

The US stock market is in for a great month in late October. The Dow may actually post its best month since 1976, while the Nasdaq and S&P 500 are also in the green. Investors are preparing to parse the latest wave of earnings this week, as well as the latest messages from the US Federal Reserve. The Fed’s meeting begins on Tuesday, and the central bank is widely expected to raise interest rates by another three-quarters of a point in its latest attempt to cool decades-high inflation. Market watchers are waiting for signs from Chairman Jerome Powell that the Fed may start easing the pedal a bit in the coming months. Read real-time market updates here.

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It’s Halloween, so it’s a good time to reflect on the scary things in life, like haunted houses, John Carpenter horror movies, and the recent performance of Big Tech stocks. US stock indexes have risen despite the weak performance of technology companies. Amazon, MicrosoftParent of Google Alphabet and a Facebook parent Meta – especially Meta – everyone had a hard time last week, as their income and guidance were generally difficult. Only Apple Everything went well – on Friday, the stock had its best day since 2020. Overall, weak performance, a slowing advertising market, lower PC demand and reduced market relevance make for chilling times in Silicon Valley.

Within days of signing its $44 billion purchase agreement Twitter, Elon Musk tweeted from a baseless, anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory website known to post misinformation about an attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul. Musk, who has more than 112 million followers on Twitter, linked to the site Sunday morning in a response to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had criticized the GOP for spreading conspiracy theories, such as the Pelosi attacker online. The billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX eventually deleted his tweet Sunday afternoon, but not before it had more than 24,000 retweets and 86,000 likes, according to NBC News. Musk’s critics, worried that content moderation would suffer on Twitter after his takeover, pointed to the incident as evidence that their worst fears had come true.

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Russian missiles hit Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, on Monday morning as the Kremlin continues to cripple Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. “There is no water in some areas,” said Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko. Russian forces are also targeting targets in other regions of Ukraine as they seek to disrupt daily life throughout the country. “The Russians attacked energy infrastructure in Dnipro and Pavlohrad. Serious damage has been recorded. All services are operational on site,” said Ukraine’s regional military. Read live war updates here.

Inflation cannot be avoided in the euro area. On Monday, the European Statistics Office released preliminary figures showing that inflation rose at an annual rate of 10.7 percent in October, which would be a record for the 19-member bloc. Russia’s war in Ukraine is the main catalyst for rapid and aggressive price growth: Energy prices rose 41.9% year-over-year, while food, alcohol and tobacco prices were 13.1% higher year-on-year. Inflation is high everywhere, but it is especially fierce in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, where prices all rose by more than 20% compared to the same period a year earlier. The reading adds pressure to the European Central Bank, which raised key interest rates by three-quarters last week – and has vowed to raise more.

— CNBC’s Jesse Pound, Jordan Novet, Holly Ellyatt and Silvia Amaro contributed to this report.

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