After stocks (^DJI, ^IXIC, ^GSPC) misstepped at the beginning of the year, Big Tech earnings could now be key to relieving market pressures and paving the way for a comeback in 2024.

Yahoo Finance Market Reporter Josh Schafer outlines factors such as AI drivers that could push stocks higher.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video Transcript

- Wall Street is eyeing what may be the key to turn the market narrative around. Here with the details, our very own Josh Schafer. Josh, what have you got?

JOSH SCHAFER: Yeah, Madison. So it's taking a look at just the overall market action today, and what we've been following that could maybe bring us higher. We've had a dull January, right? But now we're back near record highs and taking a look at what drove that today, specifically some positive big tech highlights, right? it was big tech really driving the narrative here. We saw Apple up over 3%. Technology itself, the sector, was up almost 2%.

And it just reminded me that we spent a lot of the last two months talking about that soft landing trade that we've been talking about a lot on air, and all those other areas of the market, the other 493 stocks, not the Mag Seven, right. But strategists right now are highlighting technology can still play a big role here, guys. And we're coming into big tech earnings next week, you're going to get Tesla and Netflix, and then we'll probably expect Apple, Meta, and so on and so forth, Microsoft the week after.

And just when you think about how much these stocks are a part of the S&P 500, you're talking about tech about 30% of the S&P 500, the tech sector itself, which, of course, doesn't even include Tesla in something like that. And strategists basically highlighting to me that we need to see good earnings from tech in order for that to be something that drives us further. And I think today you even saw a good example of that with Taiwan Semiconductor, right? They played that, what were the two letters they said? Was it AI?

- [LAUGHS]

JOSH SCHAFER: Right? That still works, huh?

- We still don't remember. I mean, what is it? We haven't heard enough.

JOSH SCHAFER: Right. But--

- We sprinkle AI on everything, Josh.

JOSH SCHAFER: But I think it's positive for the market to see that being something that investors are still responding to, right? When you say AI is going to drive 20% revenue growth in 2024 and your stock goes up 9%, I'm happy if I'm a tech company that's reporting in two weeks, and I know I'm going to be talking about how AI is driving things. Mark Zuckerberg talking about their success with AI today, and you see that stock up over 3%.

So perhaps as we get to earnings, we know that's what the market bulls were yelling at us all of January, just wait till earnings. Wait till earnings, then we'll see that narrative shift. And it seems like at least for one day, only one day, but we saw that start to happen today.