Investing.com-- U.S. stocks slumped Tuesday, ahead of the start of this week’s Federal Reserve meeting and Nvidia’s annual conference set to kickoff later today. 

At 4:00 p.m. ET (20:00 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 257 points, or 0.6%, the S&P 500 index fell 1%, lower, and the NASDAQ Composite dropped 1.7%.

Fed kicks off two-day meeting

The Federal Reserve kicked off its two-day meeting Tuesday that is expected to culminate in an unchanged decision on rates. 

But a lot of attention is likely to be on the publishing of new economic projections, which will offer investors the most tangible evidence yet of how U.S. central bankers view the likely impact of the Trump administration’s policies on the economy.

Some signs of cooling in the labor market could push the Fed into softening its hawkish stance, as could growing speculation over a U.S. recession. 

Data released earlier Tuesday showed that U.S. single-family homebuilding rebounded sharply in February, but rising construction costs from tariffs and labor shortages threaten the recovery.

Single-family housing starts, which account for the bulk of homebuilding, surged 11.4% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.108 million units last month. Data for January was revised to show homebuilding declining to a rate of 995,000 units instead of the previously reported pace of 993,000 units.

Trump, Putin agree to seek limited ceasefire on energy and infrastructure

Investing.com -- The White House said Tuesday that US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to seek a limited ceasesire on energy and infrastructure targets for 30 days.

"The leaders agreed that the movement to peace will begin with an energy and infrastructure ceasefire, as well as technical negotiations on implementation of a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, full ceasefire and permanent peace," according to a readout of President Donald J. Trump’s call with President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. 

“These negotiations will begin immediately in the Middle East,” the White House said.

Nvidia’s CEO Huang talks up strong AI demand ahead; Tesla continues selloff; Alphabet to acquire Wiz

In the corporate sector, Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang talked up rising AI use cases including agentic AI that will fuel the next leg growth for chip demand. 

"The amount of computation we need as a result of agentic AI, as a result of reasoning, is easily 100 times more than we thought we needed this time last year," Huang said in his keynote address at the chipmaking giant’s GTC conference in California.

Tech bulls on Wall Street welcomed the remarks from Huang on strong Nvidia demand. 

"Demand for NVDA GPUs remains extremely robust where we believe demand is currently outstripping supply 15:1 with more enterprises waiting their turn in line to receive the most advanced AI chips on the market," Wedbush said in a note.

The chipmaker nursed heavy losses over the past month, as broader market sentiment soured, and as investors questioned just how much strength there remained in the AI trade amid increased market turmoil. Nvidia’s stock was down about 20% from its January record high. 

Adobe Systems (NASDAQ:ADBE) executives are expected to provide more insight into their AI strategy during a meeting with analysts at the Photoshop-owner’s digital experience conference.

Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA), meanwhile, fell more than 5% taking total losses for the month so far to around 24% as rising competition is expected to hurt the EV maker’s sales. RBC cut its price target on the company, citing expectations for the company to cut its self-driving software. 

Alphabet Inc Class A (NASDAQ:GOOGL) fell more than 2% after agreed to acquire cybersecurity start up Wiz for around $32B.

(Peter Nursesrtocks Ambar Warrick contributed to this article.)