Financial Markets                      11/17 09:39

   

   NEW YORK (AP) -- The U.S. stock market is holding steadier on Monday 
following two weeks of sharp swings, but it's churning underneath the surface 
ahead of big-time reports coming later in the week.

   The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged and remained only a bit below its 
all-time high set late last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was also 
basically flat, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1% 
higher.

   Alphabet was the strongest force pushing upward on the market. It rose 5.2% 
in the first chance for traders to buy its stock since Berkshire Hathaway said 
it built a $4.34 billion ownership stake in Google's parent company. Berkshire 
Hathaway, run by famed investor Warren Buffett, is notorious for trying to buy 
only stocks that look like good values while avoiding anything that looks too 
expensive.

   Such discipline has become a much hotter topic on Wall Street recently. 
Critics have been warning that the U.S. stock market could be primed for a drop 
because of how high prices have shot since April, leaving them looking too 
expensive. Critics point in particular to stocks swept up in the AI mania, 
which have been surging at spectacular speeds for years.

   The company at the center of the frenzy, Nvidia, fell another 1.3% Monday, 
following swings of at least 1.8% in eight of the last 10 days. It's 
nevertheless still up nearly 40% for the year so far after it doubled in price 
in four of the last five years.

   That has Wall Street's spotlight on Wednesday, when Nvidia will report how 
much profit it made during the summer. AI stocks have surged as much as they 
have because of expectations that they'll produce huge growth in profits. If 
they fail to meet analysts' expectations, that would undercut one of the big 
assumptions that's driven the U.S. stock market to records.

   Such high expectations extend beyond tech stocks, even if they are toughest 
for AI darlings.

   Aramark fell 6% after the company, which offers food and facilities 
management for schools, national parks and convention centers, reported a 
profit for the latest quarter that fell short of analysts' expectations. It 
also said it expects an underlying measure of profit to grow between 20% and 
25% this upcoming year. While relatively strong, that was less than what 
analysts had been forecasting.

   Another source of potential disappointment for Wall Street is what the 
Federal Reserve does with interest rates. The expectation had been that the Fed 
would keep cutting interest rates in hopes of shoring up the slowing job 
market. Wall Street loves lower rates because they can give the economy and 
prices for investments a boost.

   But questions are rising about whether a third cut for the year will 
actually come after the Fed's next meeting in December, something that traders 
had earlier seen as very likely. The downside of lower interest rates is that 
they can make inflation worse, and inflation has stubbornly remained above the 
Fed's 2% target.

   Fed officials have pointed to the U.S. government's shutdown, which delayed 
the release of updates on the job market and other signals about the economy. 
With less information and less certainty about how things are going, some Fed 
officials have suggested it may be better just to wait in December to get more 
clarity.

   Now that the shutdown is over, the government is preparing to release 
September's delayed jobs report on Thursday. That could create further swings 
for the market. Too strong a job market would likely stay the Fed's hand on 
rate cuts, while too weak figures would raise worries about the economy.

   In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady. The yield on the 
10-year Treasury was at 4.14%, where it was late Friday.

   In stock markets abroad, indexes fell across much of Europe and Asia.

   Tokyo's Nikkei 225 slipped 0.1% after the government reported that the 
Japanese economy contracted at a 1.8% annual pace in the July-September quarter.

   South Korea's Kospi was an outlier and jumped 1.9% as tech-related stocks 
there did well.

   ___

   AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

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