Stocks Open Lower Ahead of Busy Earnings Week - InvestingChannel

Stocks Open Lower Ahead of Busy Earnings Week

Stocks traded lower on Monday amid a January rally as investors braced for the busiest week of earnings season and a possible interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve.

The Dow Jones Industrials nicked ahead 9.26 points to start the day and the week at 33,987.34.

The S&P 500 faltered 13.39 points to 4,057.17.

The NASDAQ Composite swooned 89.89 points to 11,531.82.

Wall Street is coming off a winning week as the stock market’s January rally continued. The NASDAQ gained 4.3% for the week, while the S&P 500 moved ahead 2.5% and Dow added 1.8%. The S&P 500 is up 5.3% for 2023 following a 19% loss last year and closed at a new year-to-date high on Friday.

There are several tests this week for this 2023 rally. About 20% of the S&P 500 will report earnings this week, including McDonald’s and General Motors on Tuesday followed by tech giants Apple, Meta Platforms, Amazon and Alphabet later in the week.

The Federal Open Market Committee meets on Tuesday and Wednesday, when the Fed is expected to hike rates by one-quarter of a percentage point. Investors will be looking for clues about how much higher the central bank will take rates in the fight against inflation. Traders have pushed stocks higher this year in part because of softer inflation reports, which they suspect could cause the Fed to soon pause its hiking campaign.

Prices for the 10-year Treasury fell slightly, raising yields to 3.54% from Friday’s 3.52%. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.

Oil prices retreated 97 cents to $78.71 U.S. a barrel.

Gold prices doffed $3.70 to $1,941.90 U.S. an ounce.

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