Stock market today: Wall Street opens higher following a slump last week
By Matt Ott, The Associated Press on July 22, 2024.
NEW YORK (AP) – U.S. stocks are climbing and clawing back some of the losses from their worst week since April. The S&P 500 was up 0.7% in early trading Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 112 points, or 0.3%, and the Nasdaq composite was up 1.1%. Big Tech stocks regained some of their sharp drops from last week. Nvidia and others had sputtered amid criticism they’d grown too expensive. Two of them, Alphabet and Tesla, will report their latest results on Tuesday. Treasury yields were holding relatively steady in the bond market after President Joe Biden said he won’t run for re-election. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below. AP Business Writer (AP) – Wall Street was poised to open with gains on Monday, the first trading day since President Joe Biden exited the 2024 race in an unprecedented weekend announcement that upended the campaign. Futures for the S&P 500 were 0.6% higher before the bell, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.2%. Biden announced his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race on Sunday and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take on former President Donald Trump, adding to uncertainties over the future of the world’s largest economy. Biden’s decision “barely dented financial markets,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary. “U.S. yields and the dollar opened slightly weaker in Asia but then rebounded, suggesting investors were fully clued into this outcome. The odds of a Trump victory also haven’t changed much,” he said. Outside of U.S. political turbulence, traders will have a busy week sorting through corporate earnings and economic data. Dozens of companies will report their latest financial results this week, including Coca-Cola, General Motors, Alphabet, Tesla, Ford and Southwest and American airlines. Closely watched economic data on housing, the overall economy and inflation could also move markets later this week. Most of the disruptions from a massive technology outage Friday appeared to have been resolved over the weekend though delays at airports continued Monday. A faulty software update caused havoc worldwide and led to the grounding by almost all airlines of a number of flights, but the impact is receding. The vast majority of cancellations early Monday were Delta Air Lines flights. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack and that it had deployed a fix. The company said the problem lay in a faulty update sent to computers running Microsoft Windows. CrowdStrike’s stock was down another 4.3% early Monday after taking an 11.1% hit on Friday. Verizon slipped 3.9% in early trading after the telecom giant reported second-quarter profit that met Wall Street expectations. Revenue, however, fell short of targets. In Europe at midday, Germany’s DAX and the CAC 40 in Paris each gained 1.4%. In London, the FTSE 100 added 0.8%. In Asian trading, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 slipped 1.2% to 39,599.00. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong added 1.3% to 17,635.88 and the Shanghai Composite index dropped 0.6% to 2,964.22 after China’s central bank unexpectedly lowered its one-year benchmark loan prime rate, or LPR, which is the standard reference for most business loans, to 3.35% from 3.45%. The People’s Bank of China cut the five-year loan prime rate, a benchmark for mortgages, to 3.85% from 3.95%, aiming to boost slowing growth and break out of a prolonged property slump. This came after the government recently reported the economy expanded at a slower-than-forecast 4.7% annual pace in the second quarter. Elsewhere in Asia, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 dipped 0.5% to 7,931.70 and South Korea’s Kospi lost 1.1% to 2,763.51. In other dealings early Monday, U.S. benchmark crude oil was unchanged fell 43 cents $78.21 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard, gave back 42 cents to $82.21 per barrel. The U.S. dollar fell to 156.90 Japanese yen from 157.49 yen. The euro rose to $1.0886 from $1.0877. On Friday, the S&P 500 fell 0.7%, closing its first losing week in the last three and its worst since April. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.9%, while the Nasdaq composite sank 0.8%. 25-24
