The stock market faces big questions about the economy this week. How to be strategic as delayed data comes out.

‘We have an economy that would arguably be in a recession without AI or data-center investments,’ says one strategist

Last Updated: Nov. 16, 2025 at 3:38 p.m. ET
First Published: Nov. 16, 2025 at 12:00 p.m. ET

Collage of businesspeople silhouettes, a calendar with pins, and digital data with an AI brain.

Investors in the week ahead will be focused on the release of U.S. economic data delayed by the longest government shutdown on record.Photo: MarketWatch photo illustration/iStockphoto

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Doubts about the artificial-intelligence trade and concerns over delayed economic data could lead to an unsettling week for stock investors.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average reached an all-time high above 48,000 last week, driven by a pivot into value stocks.
The September CPI report showed the annual headline inflation rate rising to 3%, fueling concerns about future price increases.

Stock investors may be in for an unsettling start to the week ahead if doubts about the artificial-intelligence trade keep colliding with concerns around the upcoming release of backlogged economic data, which could point to a weak jobs market and stubborn inflation.

U.S. stocks finished Friday’s session mostly lower, which left the three major stock indexes mixed for the week. On Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average

DJIA-0.65%, S&P 500

SPX-0.05% and Nasdaq Composite

COMP+0.13%, as well as the Russell 2000 small-cap index

RUT+0.22%, posted their worst performances in over a month despite the federal government’s reopening following its longest shutdown on record.

One of the biggest questions facing investors from here is whether the big stock-market selloff seen on Thursday may have more room to run, and how the economic data backlog could be interpreted once it gets released, which will start happening in a matter of days.

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There’s no consensus on either of these factors. It’s just as possible that the data, which had been delayed by the 43-day shutdown, will be viewed as out of date and that the AI trade could find renewed support, as it did during Friday’s session.

“It’s unclear how much weight the market will put on individual data points,” said Gennadiy Goldberg, head of U.S. rates strategy at TD Securities in New York, who follows the bond market. Market participants “will still look at it, but there may be a discount attached to it on the view that newer, more up-to-date data is coming.”

Jobs report on deck

This coming Thursday, the official U.S. jobs report for September will finally come out, more than a month after its original Oct. 3 release date.

But it may have less market-moving impact than in the past, Goldberg said. That’s because November’s nonfarm-payrolls data is scheduled to arrive on Dec. 5, ahead of the Federal Reserve’s Dec. 9-10 policy meeting — though confirmation from the Bureau of Labor Statistics may be needed to ensure November’s jobs report won’t be delayed or impacted by the now-ended shutdown, the TD strategist added.

David Russell, global head of market strategy at online brokerage firm TradeNation in Florida, has a different take. He sees potential for the release of the delayed data to either move markets dramatically, or to be viewed in a manner that discounts any positive trends and gives greater weight to evidence that the labor market is in trouble.

The releases “will likely be viewed negatively regardless, because people will say we still have a weak economy, slow labor market and inflation that’s above target,” Russell said in a phone interview.

“A lot of very positive outcomes were priced in before the past week, and there is potential for some of that euphoria to continue to fade,” he said. “We have an economy that would arguably be in a recession without AI or data-center investments.”

If the market starts to believe AI investments will slow, then “it will price in a weaker economy long before it can be confirmed by the numbers,” Russell added.

Investors looking for value

Last week, investors pivoted into value stocks and away from growth stocks with higher multiples. This helped sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average to an all-time high above 48,000 on Wednesday, and a second straight record close.

UnitedHealth Group Inc.

UNH-3.21%

was among the Dow members that benefited the most. But its performance as a top gainer within the blue-chip index wasn’t necessarily a good sign, because the healthcare sector is “essentially a safe haven,” according to Russell.

By Thursday, all three major U.S. stock indexes experienced an unusually rough day, partly because of diminished market-based expectations for a quarter-point interest-rate cut by the Fed in December. On Friday, the Dow experienced further declines and closed down by more than 300 points, while the S&P 500 ended slightly lower.

Read: Value stocks rally as Dow tops 48,000 for first time. What does it mean for 2026?

Also: Dow’s big drop after a record close is fairly rare. How doubts about December rate cut are weighing on Wall Street.

Jim Baird, chief investment officer at Plante Moran Financial Advisors in Michigan, said he advises investors to stick with a long-term asset-allocation plan that can be executed in a strategic manner, in order to avoid taking more risk than needed to reach their goals and to not overreact to market volatility. Plante Moran managed $23.1 billion in assets as of June 30.

For Baird, the big question about Thursday’s big selloff in equities “is whether this was a one-off day or more of a turning point in market sentiment. At this point, there’s no way to know.

“We’ve just come off a flurry of positive sentiment driven by expectations for Fed rate cuts, and we’ve gotten through an earnings season that was largely positive,” Baird said. “But that’s mostly in the rearview mirror, and now that we’ve gotten news of the government reopening, there are questions around the efficacy of the economic data that was sidelined during the shutdown.

“This leaves investors looking around with more questions about what the near-term outlook is and what the next catalyst is for the market’s direction,” he added. “In the meantime, the economic data that we have gotten has been sparse and there’s uncertainty about the additional data we will get from the government in the coming weeks.”

CPI fog

It’s still not clear when data on nonfarm payrolls and the consumer-price index for October will come out. The October CPI, which was originally scheduled for release on Nov. 13, has experienced problems with data collection. Meanwhile, the official jobs report for October, which was supposed to arrive on Nov. 7, should still eventually be released but won’t include the unemployment rate, according to Kevin Hassett, one of President Donald Trump’s top economic advisors. The BLS has provided a link to update the public on revised release dates for data.

Read: No unemployment rate for October? Key economic reports to be canceled, delayed and damaged by historic shutdown.

Recent nongovernment jobs reports from payrolls processor ADP and Challenger, Gray & Christmas have already pointed to a labor market that isn’t in great shape. So “it follows intuitively that a strong update on job creation” from September’s payrolls data “will be downplayed as old, pre-shutdown information, while weakness will be viewed as a more relevant indication of softer labor conditions prior to Oct. 1,” said BMO Capital Markets strategists Ian Lyngen, Vail Hartman and Delaney Choi in a note.

One of the few pieces of government data to be released during the shutdown was the September CPI report in late October. It showed the annual headline rate of inflation rising to 3%, keeping alive worries about future price gains.