5 things to know before the stock market opens Monday

Here are the most important news items that investors need to start their trading day:

Investors hope U.S. stocks will rally after a dismal end to the last trading week. Equities tumbled Thursday and Friday, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite fell 1.7% and 2.5% for the week, respectively. The Dow Jones Industrial Average also dropped 2.5% in its worst week since October. Earnings from Nvidia, among others, will help to drive the market this week. The personal consumption expenditures index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure, is also due on Friday. Follow live market updates.

Nvidia and its $3.3 trillion market cap will have the biggest effect on the market this week among the companies reporting earnings. It will be the first time the chipmaker has posted results since the emergence of Chinese startup DeepSeek – which claims to make competitive AI models at a small fraction of the cost of U.S. companies – roiled the stock market in January. Results from Home Depot and Lowe’s will also give reads on consumer spending and the health of the housing market. Here are the key reports to watch this week:

• Tuesday: Home Depot, before the bell
• Wednesday: Lowe’s, TJX (before the bell); Nvidia, Salesforce.com (after the bell)

Berkshire Hathaway‘s business is still booming. Warren Buffett’s conglomerate posted operating profit of $14.53 billion in the fourth quarter, up 71% from the prior-year period. Berkshire ended 2024 with $334.2 billion in cash. Buffett did not offer much explanation of why he has amassed such a staggering cash pile or why he sold $134 billion in stock during 2024. “Despite what some commentators currently view as an extraordinary cash position at Berkshire, the great majority of your money remains in equities,” he wrote in his annual letter. “That preference won’t change.”

Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency took another unprecedented step over the weekend. In a post on his social media platform X, the tech entrepreneur overseeing a dismantling of the federal government said federal employees would receive an email asking them to summarize the work they completed last week, and that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.” Federal workers started to receive emails that asked them to list about five bullet points detailing what they accomplished last week, and gave them a deadline to respond by 11:59 p.m. ET on Monday – without threatening their employment, according to NBC News. Employees at the FBI, State Department and Defense Department, among other departments and agencies, were told not to respond to the email. Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said Musk and the Trump administration have again “shown their utter disdain for federal employees and the critical services they provide to the American people.”

CNBC’s second annual Changemakers list showcases 50 women who are innovating in business and philanthropy, in areas from health care to AI, sports and media. Women face significant hurdles in the top ranks of the business world: only 11% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women – and that’s a record high. See the full list and read the stories of the women on it here.

– CNBC’s Jesse Pound, Fred Imbert, Yun Li and CNBC.com staff, along with NBC News, contributed to this report.