Stock Market Live December 4: S&P 500 (SPY) Flat Ahead of Potential Rate Cuts

Out of the gate, shares of Nvidia (NVDA) are up about $2.10 a share as it continues to pivot higher from support at $170 a share.

Helping, analysts at Morgan Stanley just set a $250 price target on the stock. Plus, President Trump is praising NVDA after visiting with CEO Jensen Huang and said the chip giant executive was aware of where he stood on export controls, as noted by Reuters.

Meta Platforms (META) is up $25.32 on the day on plans for metaverse cuts. Bloomberg said that executives have considered budget cuts as high as 30%, according to CNBC. Such a move could be significant for META, which just saw a $4.4 billion loss in its Meta Reality Labs unit.

Dollar General (DG) is up $11.55 after posting better-than-expected earnings. EPS of $1.28 beat by 35 cents. Revenue of $10.65 billion, up 4.6% year over year, beat by $50 million. The company also declared a quarterly dividend of 59 cents, which is payable on January 20 to shareholders of record as of January 6.

Wall Street is largely looking past the initial selloff and leaning into Snowflake’s (NYSE:SNOW) AI story. JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Stifel all raised their price targets into the high-$200s while reiterating bullish ratings, pointing to strong bookings and a robust Q4 outlook as evidence that underlying demand remains healthy even as product growth dips below 30%.

Canaccord also lifted its target and highlighted “good” Q3 execution, improving consumption trends and Snowflake hitting a $100 million AI run-rate a quarter ahead of plan, helped by a new $200 million Anthropic partnership.

Wells Fargo bumped its target and continues to frame Snowflake as an “AI infra” beneficiary, while Wedbush kept the stock on its AI 30 list and said it would buy on weakness. Taken together, the upgrades suggest the Street still views Snowflake as a core AI data platform, with near-term volatility not changing the long-term thesis.

Goldman Sachs just reiterated its buy rating on Salesforce following earnings.

As noted by the firm, it now has a $385 price target following CRM earnings, especially with revenue and guidance in line with expectations. EPS of $3.25 beat estimates by 39 cents. Revenue of $10.26 billion, up 8.7% year over year, was in line with estimates.

Analysts at Wedbush reiterated an outperform rating on CRM with a $375 price target. Evercore reiterated an outperform rating with a $340 price target. Morgan Stanley reiterated an overweight rating on CRM with a $405 price target. Wells Fargo analysts reiterated an equal weight rating on CRM with a $265 price target.

Fueling interest rate cuts was a decline in ADP private payrolls for November. Instead of a gain of 40,000 jobs, ADP reported a loss of 32,000 jobs for the month. In addition, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, we’re now seeing the most layoff announcements since 2020 – which is another sign of a labor market slowdown that’s also boosting odds for a rate cut.

As noted by CNBC, “The firm said layoff plans totaled 71,321 in November, a step down from the massive cuts announced in October but still enough to bring the 2025 total up to 1.17 million. That total is 54% higher than the same 11-month period a year ago and the highest level since 2020, when the Covid pandemic rocked the global economy.”