Stocks struggle before Fed meeting, trade talks, slew of earnings reports
U.S. stocks struggled Monday ahead of this week's Federal Reserve meeting, which could produce the first interest rate cut since 2008, Sino-American trade talks and a busy week for quarterly reports.
The central bank is meeting Tuesday and Wednesday and is expected to cut a key interest rate by a quarter of a point, which buoyed the 30-stock Dow Jones Industrial Average. The bank will announce its decision on Wednesday afternoon.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer are in Shanghai for several days of talks with top Chinese trade officials. The tariff hikes are battering exporters on both sides and disrupting trade in goods from soybeans to medical devices.
Seven members of the Dow and 159 members in the S&P 500, or almost one-third of the benchmark index, are posting results this week.
Among the highlights of this week's quarterly reports are those from Apple on Tuesday, General Electric and Fiat Chrysler on Wednesday, General Motors, Cigna and Verizon on Thursday and oil giants ExxonMobil and Chevron on Friday.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| I:DJI | DOW JONES AVERAGES | 43408.47 | +139.53 | +0.32% |
| SP500 | S&P 500 | 5917.11 | +0.13 | +0.00% |
| I:COMP | NASDAQ COMPOSITE INDEX | 18966.143245 | -21.32 | -0.11% |
Pfizer and Mylan are merging their off-patent drug businesses to boost sales growth and create a global seller of lower-priced medicines. Mylan shares soared, while Pfizer shares slipped.
Shares of Beyond Meat slumped after the closing bell, following the fake meat seller's first quarterly report as a publicly listed company. The company reported surprisingly strong sales and it boosted its full year 2019 outlook. However, its earnings per share were disappointing and the company announced a big secondary offering of 3.25 million shares.
Beyond Meat is up 39 percent so far in July and has surged 780 percent since its IPO in May.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMZN | AMAZON.COM INC. | 202.88 | -1.73 | -0.85% |
| FB | NO DATA AVAILABLE | - | - | - |
| PFE | PFIZER INC. | 24.94 | -0.16 | -0.65% |
| MYL | NO DATA AVAILABLE | - | - | - |
| BYND | BEYOND MEAT INC. | 5.15 | +0.27 | +5.53% |
The week will end with the most important report of the month, the July employment report.
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The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 2.06 percent, and crude oil prices rose more than 1 percent to close at $56.85 per barrel.