Turbulent Tuesday on Tap for Stocks

Stocks didn’t lose ground Monday, but they didn’t gain much, either. The major averages finished little-changed in a see-saw session, after a cautious outlook from Dow component Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT) rekindled worries about third-quarter earnings season.

The Dow Industrials recovered from a loss of 108 points to end the session up 2.4 points. It was the same story for the S&P 500, which finished up a fraction. The Nasdaq Composite jumped a healthier 0.4%, though the technology sector has underperformed the broader market the last six weeks.

Futures Tuesday morning are indicating a significant drop at the open, with Dow futures down 150 points.

Wall Street got earnings from multinationals DuPont (NYSE:DD), UPS (NYSE:UPS), and 3M (NYSE:MMM) before the market opened, with mixed results.

A recent concern has been the dramatic revenue miss for S&P 500 companies that have reported their third-quarter numbers so far. About 61% have missed Street estimates as far as revenue is concerned, according to Thomson-Reuters (as of Friday's close). That compares with the 38% average revenue miss seen  over the past decade.

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) may be making its iPad smaller, and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) may be making its tablet bigger.

Apple is expected to announce a smaller iPad (among other things) at an event in San Jose, California, at 1 p.m. ET today. Meanwhile, Google has an event in New York on Oct. 29, and there's speculation it will announce a larger tablet, reportedly called the Nexus 10. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) starts shipping its Surface tablet this Friday.

FedEx (NYSE:FDX) is hiring 20,000 workers for the holidays, the same number as last year. They're expected to work on holiday shipping, which is expected to jump 13% from last year, to a record 280 million packages shipped between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Rival UPS (NYSE:UPS) releases its shipping estimates Monday.

Finally, Domino's Pizza (NYSE:DPZ) spent three years perfecting its handmade pan pizza and is celebrating today. The pizza chain will be giving away free slices from noon to 2 p.m. local time at participating locations.