Trump’s U.N. Address Before Iran’s: 8 Key Items Shaping the Stock Market Tuesday

These are the early headlines and other items poised to influence the market at the start of the trading day. As we share this collection of market drivers, U.S. equity futures point to a positive start to the trading day.

1. Wall Street’s main indexes were steady on Tuesday, following strong AI-driven gains in the previous session, while investors awaited potential talks between the United ‌States and Iran that could end their six-month-old conflict. Oil prices and the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note , which have driven recent market sentiment, hovered near warning levels, reflecting how investors were holding ground ahead of key events later this week. (Reuters)

2. Iran can reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the United States eases military pressure and ‌lifts its blockade on Iranian ports, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Tuesday… Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, who left Tehran for New York on Tuesday morning, will not meet U.S. President Donald Trump at the UN headquarters in New York, the official told Reuters. The Iranian official said details on an agreement to end hostilities with Washington can be discussed in New York via mediators, explaining that Tehran’s proposal was delivered to the US via mediators on September 16. (Reuters)

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, September 23. With President Trump sharing over the weekend that he was in “deciding mode” and that “very big things” could happen soon, we’ll want to digest his U.N address later on Tuesday and any ones following Pezeshkian’s address on Wednesday. As we do that, we’ll be watching oil prices to gauge the market’s reactions.

3. Meta Platforms may finally have an artificial-intelligence product that Wall Street trusts, though it will need to gain the trust of users and rivals, too. Expect the internet giant to make its case at its annual Meta Connect conference beginning Wednesday…

Muse is a virtual personal assistant — booking appointments and trips, placing orders, and sending emails and messages on behalf of users. It has been Apple App Store’s most-downloaded free application in the U.S. each of the last four days, according to data from Sensor Tower, one spot ahead of OpenAI’s ChatGPT app. Alongside the start-up rival Instinct, Muse heralds the “the transition to consumer AI assistants from chatbots.” (Barrons)

That sets the stage for Meta’s (META) Meta Connect event that begins on Wednesday as well as Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote address. It also potentially brings Meta back in the fold after several lackluster AI efforts. However, for Muse to work, it needs access to users’ data and that is where Meta’s strategy could face hurdles. An Oppenheimer & Co. survey of U.S. consumers found just 8% would trust Meta with their passwords, less than one-third of the number who would trust Google.

To be fair, the company has significant social-media data it can leverage, and can integrate agents with its Marketplace e-commerce platform. But user-privacy hiccups are likely to be a problem, especially since Meta is aiming to use Muse to grow its subscription revenue stream. The ability to build that stream would likely ease concerns over Meta’s AI spending, but to do that, Zuck and crew will need to give people a reason to subscribe. That includes adding Muse to their AI lineup or replacing offerings from others like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity.

Now, to see what Zuck says on Wednesday and how it’s received. And with that in mind…

4. Using AI agents for online shopping could increase the risk of scams, fraud and data-privacy breaches, banks including NatWest and Bank of America said on Tuesday, as they set out ‌principles for developing the technology. Technology companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta are increasingly promoting AI chatbots as shopping tools, envisioning a future in which shoppers use AI agents to select products and make purchases on their behalf. Retailers, meanwhile, are racing to influence chatbots’ recommendations. (Reuters)

On the one hand, the use of of AI chatbots as shopping tools has the potential to help consumers from a productivity and savings perspective, but it also opens the door for another layer of security and data privacy concerns. With Amazon (AMZN) reportedly cutting off Meta’s Muse personal AI agent from shopping on Amazon.com on behalf of customers, after attempting unsuccessfully to get Meta to voluntarily exclude the e-commerce site, we’ll be very interested in what Zuck has to say tomorrow about access and accountability.

We can see why Meta and others are interested in gaining access to shopping platforms because controlling the online shopping experience and the customer relationship is a powerful position. It also means other potential revenue streams, including advertising and that subscription revenue stream we touched on above.

5. Market expectations for earnings at European luxury-goods makers are overly optimistic, given softening demand conditions and buying trends, according to analysts at RBC. A weakening economic backdrop is producing mixed data points in China and a potential moderation in US spending… Expectations for next year’s earnings “remain overly optimistic in our view assuming revenue growth acceleration and margin expansion across most stocks which is not reflective of the current luxury backdrop and requires an inflexion in trends,”… The Iran war has driven up oil prices, fueling worries about inflation and drawing a hawkish response from central banks that threatens to curb consumer spending. Persistently sluggish demand in China has further frustrated hopes for a recovery in industry earnings. (Bloomberg)

We’ve been discussing S&P 500 earnings expectations for H2 2026 and 2027, and it seems others have started to connect the dots between current pressures and those expectations for certain sectors. With companies ranging from Walmart (WMT) and Costco (COST) to Dollar General (DG) talking about how better-off-to-wealthy consumers are flocking to their locations, it’s fair to think there is downside earnings risk relative to current expectations. Reports of weak consumer spending in China is a flag given that China accounts for 20% to 25% of the total global luxury goods market.

6. As the third quarter wraps up, one indicator shows dividend cuts are on the rise. Among thousands of public companies tracked globally by TMX Wall Street Horizon, about 19% of dividend-payout announcements during the quarter have been for reductions, rather than for increases or no change. That would be the highest proportion since the second quarter of 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic slammed into the global economy… In the U.S., 11 companies tracked by TMX Wall Street Horizon have announced continuing but lower dividends during the third quarter. Two were food sellers, Conagra and Campbell’s. Many staples companies have been squeezed between rising costs and pricing pressures. (WSJ)

While 11 companies out of the thousands of U.S. listed stocks equates to a very small percentage, the combination of inflation pressures and AI spending on margins are a combination that could pressure cash flow and dividend streams.

In some cases, it may mean smaller-than-expected dividend increases or a pause in such increases for some with a known track record of boosting dividends each year. The former could pressure shares, but the latter would reduce the candidate pool for Dividend Aristocrat strategies. For us, this will be another item to be mindful of when the Q3 2026 earnings season begins in the next few weeks.

7. Economic data today per TipRanks: ADP Employment Change (Weekly), Richmond Fed Manufacturing & Services index (September)

8. Companies reporting today per TipRanks: AM – AutoZone (AZO), Thor Industries (THO). PM – KB Home (KBH), Worthington Enterprises (WOR).

More Pro Portfolio

At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long AMZN, COST and META.