06:42 AM EDT, 08/26/2024 (MT Newswires) -- US equity investors will watch out for Nvidia's ( NVDA ) quarterly earnings and the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation data this week after Chair Jerome Powell signaled rate cuts are coming.

* Nvidia ( NVDA ) will report after the bell on Wednesday. The cloud numbers and artificial intelligence data points from Redmond, Amazon.com ( AMZN ) and Alphabet's (GOOG, GOOGL) Google ( GOOG ) were "very strong" recently, indicating a massive enterprise AI demand is underway, Wedbush Securities said.

"We expect another drop-the-mic performance from Nvidia ( NVDA ) as right now Jensen & Co. are the only game in town with $1 trillion of AI Cap-Ex on the way for the next few years with Nvidia's ( NVDA ) GPUs the new oil and gold in this world."

* US equity indexes rose last week as investors expect policy easing from September after Powell said softness in the labor market is more concerning than inflation and "the time has come for policy to adjust."

* Data has gone the way expected for a September cut since the June dot plot, a note from Scotiabank said. Still, it hasn't evolved significantly enough to merit rapid policy normalization.

* "The September dot plot is likely to go from June's median call for one cut this year with a substantial number in the two-cut cumulative 50bps camp, to probably -75," Scotiabank's head of capital market economics Derek Holt said. "I just don't see them swinging from -25 to -100 or more over the three remaining meetings this year as the median projection."

* Another core personal consumption expenditures report is due Friday and then one Consumer Price Index report before the September decision to add to the data risk as investors look for validation disinflation.

* The Israeli military launched what it called "preemptive" strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon, as the Iran-backed militant group said it carried out attacks in response to the killing of a top commander, CNN reported Monday. A Bloomberg report said the Middle East is on the edge following the bombing.