Here are the most important news items that investors need to start their trading day:
1. Striking distance
The S&P 500 is within striking distance of its all-time high, gaining 0.4% on Tuesday to close the day at 4,774.75. At that mark, the index is less than 1% off its record close of 4,796.56, set nearly two years ago in January 2022. The S&P 500 is coming off eight straight weeks of gains, its longest win streak since 2017. And even with a shortened trading week, broad market momentum should help lift the index to a new all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite are likewise on eight-week win streaks. Follow live market updates.
2. AI premium
The buzzword around Wall Street these days is "artificial intelligence." That hype is translating into higher stock prices, at least for a handful of companies. The biggest AI winner is Nvidia, up 237% this year driven by demand for its processors designed to handle the workloads needed to train and run large language models. But AMD, Arista Networks and Cloudflare are surging too, up 121%, 95% and 89%, respectively, due to excitement around their processing and data center capabilities and their positioning in the AI wave.
Read more: AI boom fails to propel China's cloud market growth
3. Apple 'peal
Apple is appealing an import ban on its popular Apple Watches following a complaint from medical monitoring technology company Masimo accusing the tech giant of hiring Masimo employees, stealing its pulse oximetry technology and incorporating it into the device. The U.S. International Trade Commission banned the import of the watches in light of the complaint, and President Joe Biden's administration declined to veto the measure. That left Apple to appeal and to file an emergency request with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to halt the ban at least until U.S. Customs and Border Protection rules on redesigned versions of the watches and whether they infringe Masimo's patents. That ruling is due Jan. 12.
4. Color me impressed
Warner Bros. Discovery's 'The Color Purple' cleaned up at the Christmas box office, raking in $18.15 million. It's the best box office debut over the holiday since 2009's "Sherlock Holmes" and the second-best ever for the day. The film, produced by Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, is based on the Broadway musical adaptation of the book-turned-movie, all of the same name. Its opening day performance along with the hauls of "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" and "Wonka" means Warner Bros. Discovery occupied the top three spots at the box office on Christmas.
5. 2024 predictions
If 2023 was the year of the almost-recession, what does that mean for 2024? Well, some experts say we're not out of the woods. With inflation still up (though less so) and interest rates still high (though holding), some economists are still calling for a mild recession — possibly even "the mildest in history," according to Raymond James. But our odds may be improving: 76% of economists believe the chance of a recession in the next 12 months is no more than half, according to a December survey from the National Association for Business Economics. Put another way, more than three-quarters of surveyed economists think it's more likely we avoid recession in 2024 than not. So if 2023 was the year of the almost-recession, 2024 may be the sequel.
– CNBC's Samantha Subin, Fred Imbert, Jordan Novet, Sarah Whitten and Lorie Konish and Reuters contributed to this report.
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