Wall Street opened lower on Monday ahead of the Fed’s policy meeting later this week. Dow Jones Industrial Average contracts slipped 24 points, or 0.1 percent, to 17,522, while those on the Nasdaq 100 Index dropped 0.2 percent.
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U.S. stocks were lower in early trading on Monday ahead of this week’s Federal Reserve policy meeting and as Apple shares fell a day before it reports quarterly results.
The Fed is widely expected to hold off on raising interest rates, but traders will be paying close attention to any signals regarding a rate hike in December. Duke dropped 2.1 percent.
It’s the core week of third-quarter earnings, with about 160 companies including Apple (on Tuesday) scheduled.
New-home sales for September are due at 10 a.m. Eastern Time, followed by a reading for the Dallas Fed manufacturing index at 10:30 a.m. But much attention will focus this week on the two-day Fed meeting that ends on Wednesday.
Investors punished a handful of other companies with disappointing results including engine manufacturer Cummins (-8.3 percent), online food delivery company GrubHub (-28.1 percent) and JetBlue Airways (-8.0 percent).
“The advance on the S&P 500 over the past few weeks has been nearly linear, but we are not seeing it confirmed in the Russell 2000 or equal-weighted index, so we expect anxiety to creep in over the next few months”, Wiegand said.
The S&P is up 12.28 points, or 0.6 percent.
The S&P 500 lost five points, or 0.25 per cent, to 2,066 while the Nasdaq fell five points to 5,030. Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index slid by 0.9 percent, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index and China’s Shanghai Composite Index both inched up by 0.1 percent.
Piedmont Natural Gas, which distributes natural gas in three southern states in the USA, jumped 37.0 percent on news it will be acquired by Duke Energy $4.9 billion.
Xerox fell 3.0 percent as it reported a loss of $34 million in the third quarter and announced it would undertake a review of the company’s business portfolio and capital allocation options.
Also after the bell, shares of Twitter dropped 11 percent to $27.89 after it reported results.
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About 6.1 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, below the 7.3 billion daily average for the past 20 trading days, according to Thomson Reuters data. Exxon Mobil (XOM – Get Report), Chevron (CVX – Get Report), ConocoPhillips (COP – Get Report), Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A – Get Report), Total (TOT – Get Report), and PetroChina (PTR) moved lower, while the Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLE) fell 1.6%. On the Nasdaq, 1,520 issues fell and 864 advanced.
