Stock Market Today: Dow Set to Slip on Columbus Day as Alibaba and

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The stock market was mixed Monday, with Columbus Day in the U.S. likely making for a quiet day of trading, as Alibaba and Chinese tech stocks surged while investors await the beginning of earnings season and key inflation data in the week ahead.

Futures for the

Dow Jones Industrial Average
indicated an open 60 points lower after the index slipped 8 points Friday to close at 34,746. Futures for the

S&P 500
and

Nasdaq
signaled a similar start.

U.S. bond markets are closed for the Columbus Day holiday while the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq remain open—but analysts expect much lower volumes Monday and a quiet day ahead. The S&P 500 has seen an average gain of 0.7% on Columbus Days dating back to 1991, compared with a daily average rise of 0.04%.

Investor attention remains focused on familiar themes, such as supply-chain pressures on company profits, a global energy crunch, inflation, and the future of central bank stimulus. 

Markets will be able to digest new updates on many of these topics in the week ahead. Earnings season gets under way in earnest in the coming days, and a major inflation indicator—the Consumer Price Index (CPI)—will be released Wednesday along with the latest minutes from the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy committee.

“The week ahead will center around the U.S. CPI release on Wednesday but it might be a touch backward looking given that energy has spiked more recently and that used car prices are again on the march after a late summer fall that will likely be captured in this week’s release,” said Jim Reid, a strategist at Deutsche Bank. 

“Elsewhere, we’ve got a potentially more challenging U.S. earnings season than that seen over the last year,” Reid added. “In addition, minutes from the last [Federal Open Market Committee meeting] will give clues to the latest taper thinking on Wednesday as well.”

Investors will closely watch the wave of coming corporate earnings for the impact of rising energy prices and supply-chain complications, but the first major groups to release results are banks later this week. 

Bank of America

(BAC),

Citigroup

(C),

Wells Fargo

(WFC),

Morgan Stanley
…