5 things to know before the stock exchange opens on Monday 31 October

Here are the key news investors need to start their trading day:

The US stock markets are poised to wrap up a fantastic month as October comes to a close. Indeed, the Dow may well achieve its best month since 1[ads1]976, while the Nasdaq and S&P 500 are also set to end in the green. Investors are preparing to analyze the latest wave of earnings this week, as well as the latest announcements from the Federal Reserve. The Fed’s meeting starts on Tuesday, and the central bank is expected to raise interest rates by another three-quarters in its latest attempt to cool decades of high inflation. Market watchers will be watching for signs from Chairman Jerome Powell that the Fed may begin to ease the pedal a bit in the coming months. Read live market updates here.

Read more from CNBC PRO: How to Trade the Back Half of Earnings Season

It’s Halloween, so it’s a good time to dwell on the scary things in life, like haunted houses, John Carpenter’s horror movies, and the recent performance of Big Tech stocks. US stock indexes have risen despite the weak performance of technology companies. Amazon, MicrosoftGoogle Parent Alphabet and Facebook parent Meta – especially Meta – everyone had a tough time last week as their earnings and guidance were generally weak. Just apple did well — on Friday, the stock had its best day since 2020. Combined, weak performance, a slowing ad market, lower PC demand and declining market relevance make for some tumultuous times in Silicon Valley.

Within days of closing its $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, Elon Musk tweeted an unsubstantiated, anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory, from a website known for posting false information, about the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul. Musk, who has more than 112 million followers on Twitter, linked to the site in a response Sunday morning to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had criticized the GOP for spreading conspiracy theories, as Pelosi’s attackers did online. The billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX eventually took down his tweet on Sunday afternoon, but not before it had more than 24,000 retweets and 86,000 likes, according to NBC News. Critics of Musk, worried that content moderation would suffer on Twitter after his takeover, pointed to the incident as an indication that their worst fears were coming true.

Read more: GM stops paid ads on Twitter after Musk’s takeover

Russian missiles pounded Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, on Monday morning as the Kremlin sought to further destroy Ukraine’s supply infrastructure. “There is no water supply in some areas,” said Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko. Russian forces have also targeted facilities in other areas of Ukraine as they appear to disrupt daily life throughout the country. “The Russians targeted energy infrastructure facilities in Dnipro and Pavlohrad. Serious destruction has been recorded. All services are working on site,” a regional Ukrainian military official said. Read live war updates here.

There is no escaping inflation in the Eurozone. Europe’s statistics office published preliminary figures on Monday that said inflation grew at an annual rate of 10.7% in October, which would be a record for the 19-member bloc. Russia’s war in Ukraine is the main catalyst for the rapid and aggressive price growth: Energy prices jumped 41.9% year-on-year, while food, alcohol and tobacco prices were 13.1% higher year-on-year. Inflation is high all around, but it is particularly severe in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all of which had a price increase of over 20% compared to the same period the previous year. The reading will put even more pressure on the European Central Bank, which raised interest rates by three quarters last week – and has promised more increases.

— CNBC’s Jesse Pound, Jordan Novet, Holly Ellyatt and Silvia Amaro contributed to this report.

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