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Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

The three major indexes are coming off back-to-back winning weeks, with the S&P 500 on Friday rising closer to records it set earlier this year. Stocks’ advances came as investors geared up for the last Federal Reserve policy meeting of the year, which is set to kick off tomorrow.

Here’s what to know:

• The delayed release of September’s personal consumption expenditures price index showed core PCE — a key inflation measure — was lighter than economists anticipated on a 12-month basis.
• The report gave stocks a boost on Friday, as traders bet the data would encourage Fed officials to cut interest rates this week.
• The Fed is set to announce its decision on Wednesday. Traders are pricing in about a 90% likelihood that the central bank cuts interest rates again, according to CME’s FedWatch tool.
• Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that he expects the U.S. economy to finish the year with 3% real GDP growth, even after the hit from the federal government shutdown.
• Following its four-day win streak last week, the S&P 500 is now roughly 0.7% away from its intraday record and about a quarter-percent off its closing high.
• Follow live markets updates here.

Berkshire Hathaway announced this morning that Todd Combs, investment officer and Geico CEO, will leave the conglomerate to join JPMorgan Chase as head of its new Security and Resiliency Initiative.

Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett, who will step down as CEO at the end of the year, said in a press release that Combs “made many great hires” for Geico and “broadened its horizons.”

Nancy Pierce, operations chief at Geico, will replace Combs as the business’ CEO. Berkshire also announced that its CFO Marc Hamburg will retire in June 2027 and be replaced by Charles Chang, current CFO of Berkshire Hathaway Energy.

Both Wall Street and Hollywood were left reeling after the announcement of the Netflix–Warner Bros. deal on Friday. Now, the question is if the agreement can get over regulatory hurdles.

President Donald Trump’s administration views the deal with “heavy skepticism,” a senior administration official told CNBC’s Eamon Javers on Friday. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has already asked for an antitrust review, calling the deal an “anti-monopoly nightmare.”

Believing it has a better chance of securing regulatory approval, Paramount Skydance is weighing whether to bring a bid straight to WBD shareholders in a last-ditch effort to beat Netflix, sources told CNBC’s Alex Sherman. Meanwhile, movie theater operators are wondering whether they can survive if the Netflix deal makes the world’s largest streaming service the owner of a major film studio.

After losing its search antitrust case last year, Alphabet on Friday got more details about the consequences it will face.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said Google can’t enter into an agreement like it has with Apple, which it pays for search browser usage, unless the deal has termination date of a year or less. Mehta also listed requirements for the makeup of a committee that will decide who Google has to share its data with.

But as CNBC’s Jennifer Elias notes, these weren’t the most drastic punishments on the table. Mehta in September ruled against harsher penalties proposed by the Department of Justice, which could have included the forced sale of Google’s Chrome browser.

The global denim market is now a more than $100 billion industry, driven by major retailers such as Levi Strauss and American Eagle. But as CNBC’s Gabrielle Fonrouge reports, its origins are far more humble.

Blue jeans were born out of a woman’s frustration with the frequent rips in her gold miner husband’s denim pants. Her tailor’s solution — adding copper rivets to the garment’s key points of strain — signified the birth of what we know today as the blue jean. In the approximately century and a half since, the pant has become a staple of American fashion that transcends income class and trend cycles.

• Monday: New York Fed’s Survey of Consumer Expectations
• Tuesday: Job Openings & Labor Turnover data for October
• Wednesday: Fed decision and press conference; Oracle and Adobe earnings (after the bell)
• Thursday: Lululemon, Costco and Broadcom earnings (after the bell)

CNBC Pro subscribers can see a calendar and rundown for the week here.

— CNBC’s Sean Conlon, Ryan Ermey, Alex Sherman, Lillian Rizzo, Dan Mangan, Sarah Whitten, John Melloy, Jennifer Elias and Gabrielle Fonrouge contributed to this report. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.

IBM announced Monday that it is acquiring data streaming platform Confluent in a deal worth $11 billion.

Shares of Confluent soared 29%. IBM stock climbed about 1%.

IBM will pay $31 per share in cash for all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Confluent, according to a release. The transaction is expected to close by the middle of 2026. Shares of Confluent closed at $23.14 on Friday.

“With the acquisition of Confluent, IBM will provide the smart data platform for enterprise IT, purpose-built for AI,” IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said in a release.

IBM said the deal will bolster its artificial intelligence offerings as it expects global data growth to more than double by 2028.

Wedbush called it a “strong move” from IBM that adds more data processing capabilities to its hybrid cloud ecosystem and is a natural fit to help eliminate data silos for powering AI.

“We loudly applaud this deal as Arvind takes IBM further into the AI Revolution with more acquisitions likely ahead,” the analysts said in a note.

Wedbush maintained its overweight rating on IBM and $325 price target. IBM closed at $307.94 on Friday.

The addition of Confluent fits with IBM’s deal last year to land cloud software maker HashiCorp for $6.4 billion and the 2023 move to acquire Apptio in a deal worth $4.6 billion. Both of those acquisitions were all-cash deals.

Confluent has more than 6,500 clients across major industries and works with Anthropic, Amazon‘s AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft, Snowflake and others.

The wave of capital pouring into artificial intelligence infrastructure is far from peaking, said Ben Powell, chief investment strategist for APAC at BlackRock, arguing the sector’s “picks and shovels” suppliers — from chipmakers to energy producers and copper-wire manufacturers — remain the clearest winners as hyperscalers race to outspend one another.

The surge in AI-related capital expenditure shows no sign of slowing as tech giants push aggressively to secure an edge in what they see as a winner-takes-all contest, Powell told CNBC Monday on the sidelines of the Abu Dhabi Finance Week.

“The capex deluge continues. The money is very, very clear,” he said, adding that BlackRock is focused on what he called a “traditional picks and shovels capex super boom, which still feels like it’s got more to go.”

AI infrastructure has been one of the biggest drivers of global investment this year, fueling a broader market rally, even as some investors question how long the boom can last.

Nvidia, whose GPU chips are the backbone of the AI revolution, became the first company to briefly surpass $5 trillion in market capitalization amid a dizzying AI-fueled market rally that sparked talk of an AI bubble.

Microsoft and OpenAI also reached a restructuring deal in October to support the ChatGPT developer’s fundraising efforts. OpenAI has reportedly been preparing for an initial public offering that could value the company at $1 trillion, according to Reuters.

The build-out has set off long-term procurement efforts across the tech sector, from chip supply agreements to power commitments. Grid operators from the U.S. to the Middle East are racing to meet soaring electricity demand from new data centers. Companies, including Amazon and Meta, have budgeted tens of billions of dollars annually for AI-related investments.

S&P Global estimates data-center power demand could nearly double by 2030, mostly driven by hyperscale, enterprise and leased facilities, along with crypto-mining sites.