U.S. stocks are remaining relatively calm Monday, and indexes are drifting in mixed trading ahead of President Donald Trump’s latest deadline on tariffs.
The S&P 500 was 0.1% higher in morning trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 89 points, or 0.2%, as of 10:45 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1% lower.
Wall Street is coming off a rocky couple of weeks, starting after the S&P 500 set a record following a parade of fatter-than-expected profit reports from big U.S. companies. Then, the market dove sharply amid several weaker-than-expected reports on the U.S. economy, including a couple showing U.S. households are getting much more pessimistic about inflation because of the threat of tariffs.
The latest report to show less economic strength than expected came Monday on U.S. manufacturing. Overall activity is still growing, but not by quite as much as economists had forecast. Perhaps more discouragingly, manufacturers are seeing a contraction in new orders. Prices, meanwhile, rose amid discussions about who will pay for Trump’s tariffs.
“Demand eased, production stabilized, and destaffing continued as panelists’ companies experience the first operational shock of the new administration’s tariff policy,” said Timothy Fiore, chair of the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing business survey committee.
A set of tariffs announced by Trump on Canada, Mexico and China is set to take effect on Tuesday, but he has shown he can pull back on such announcements at the last minute. That’s what he did a month ago, when he delayed implementation of the taxes on imports from Canada and Mexico.
The hope on Wall Street is that Trump is using the threat of tariffs as a tool for negotiations and that he’ll ultimately go through with policies that would mean less damage for the global economy and trade. Tariffs could raise prices on everyday items even more for U.S. households, when high inflation has proven to be stubborn to subdue fully.
The market’s recent slump has hit Nvidia and some other formerly high-flying areas of the market particularly hard. They were mixed on Monday, with Nvidia down 4.7% but Elon Musk’s Tesla up 1.9%.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, Kroger fell 1% after the grocery chain’s Chairman and CEO Rodney McMullen resigned following an internal investigation into his personal conduct.
Stocks of companies enmeshed in the cryptocurrency economy did better after Trump said over the weekend that his administration was moving forward with a crypto strategic reserve.
MicroStrategy, the company that’s now known as Strategy and has been raising money to buy bitcoin, rose 3.4%. Coinbase, the crypto trading platform, gained 2.3%.
Tuesday will bring not only potentially new tariffs but also earnings reports from several big U.S. retailers, including Target, Best Buy, Ross Stores and AutoZone.
Such reports are always highly anticipated because they can shed light on how well U.S. consumers are doing, and spending by U.S. households is the main engine for the world’s largest economy. But these reports could carry extra resonance following data showing U.S. households may not be waiting for tariffs to hit to change their behavior.
Across the Pacific in China, manufacturers reported an uptick in orders in February as importers rushed to beat higher U.S. tariffs and a Chinese state media report said that Beijing was considering ways to retaliate.
Trump had imposed a tariff of 10% on imports from, China and that’s scheduled to rise to 20% beginning Tuesday. He also ended the “de minimis” loophole that exempted imports worth less than $800 from tariffs.
In Hong Kong, Chinese bubble tea chain Mixue Bingcheng’s stock soared 43% following its $444 million debut on the market. The company claims to be the world’s largest food retail chain, with more than 45,000 outlets, and its jump came as the Hang Seng index rose 0.3%.
Indexes rose by even more across Europe and in Tokyo. European markets leaped after a report showed an easing of inflation in February. That should help the European Central Bank, which investors widely expect will deliver another cut to interest rates later this week.
Germany’s DAX surged 2.8%, and France’s CAC 40 jumped 1.4%. Stocks outside the United States have performed better than the S&P 500 this year, even with Trump’s promises for “America First” policies
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.20% from 4.24% just before the manufacturing report’s release. It’s come down sharply since January, when it was approaching 4.80%, as worries have built about the possibility of a slowing U.S. economy.
Often, falls in Treasury yields can give a boost to stock prices because they make loans cheaper to get and give a boost to the economy. But the reason for this recent drop in yields, softer economic growth expectations, mean that’s not the case this time, according to Morgan Stanley strategists led by Michael Wilson.
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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
U.S. stocks are drifting in mixed trading ahead of President Donald Trump’s latest deadline on tariffs.
BANGKOK – Wall Street drove higher before markets opened on Monday following a dismal stretch that saw the S&P 500 decline in five out of six days over worries about President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Futures for the S&P 500 rose 0.5% before the bell, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.4%. The technology-laden Nasdaq climbed 0.7%.
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After being delayed for about a month, Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico start Tuesday, in addition to the doubling of the 10% universal tariff charged on imports from China.
The prospect of escalating tariffs has already thrown the global economy into turmoil, with consumers increasingly anxious about inflation worsening. The threat of tariffs has spooked investors as well, knocking the S&P 500 index off its all-time high, though it did rally Friday afternoon.
Chinese manufacturers reported an uptick in orders in February as importers rushed to beat higher U.S. tariffs and a Chinese state media report said that Beijing was considering ways to retaliate.
Trump had imposed a tariff of 10% on imports from China and that will rise to 20% beginning Tuesday. He also ended the “de minimis” loophole that exempted imports worth less than $800 from tariffs.
In equities trading early Monday, Intel jumped 5%, presumably on media reports that competitors Nvidia and Broadcom are pleased with recent manufacturing testing in conjunction with Intel. Broadcom and Intel are reportedly trying to decide whether to commit to manufacturing contracts with Intel that could generate a huge influx of revenue for the struggling company.
Intel, once a dominant force in the semiconductor industry, announced on Friday that it was pushing back the expected opening for its semiconductor project in central Ohio.
Fashion brand owner Capri Holdings rose 7.4% in premarket trading on reports that it was getting closer to a deal to sell its Versace business to Prada for $1.6 billion.
Shares of Kroger dipped 1.3% on news that the grocery chain’s Chairman and CEO Rodney McMullen resigned after an internal investigation into his personal conduct.
In Asian trading, Chinese bubble tea chain Mixue Bingcheng’s shares soared 43% in Hong Kong after its $444 million IPO. Local reports said it set a local record for subscriptions, which exceeded 1 trillion Hong Kong dollars ($128 billion). The company claims to be the world’s largest food retail chain, with more than 45,000 outlets.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.3% to 23,006.27.
The Shanghai Composite index slipped 0.1% to 3,316.93 despite upbeat Chinese factory data, as sharply higher tariffs on U.S. imports of Chinese goods looked set to take effect on Tuesday.
In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 advanced 1.7% to 37,785.47.
South Korean markets were closed for a holiday, while the S&P/ASX 200 in Australia gained 0.9% to 8,245.70.
Taiwan’s Taiex sank 1.3%, while in Bangkok, the SET fell 1.3%.
Markets in Europe leaped after a report showed that inflation there eased to an annual 2.4% in February, supporting the case for another interest rate cut from the European Central Bank.
At midday, Germany’s DAX added 2.4%, the CAC 40 in Paris climbed 1.4% and Britain’s FTSE 100 gained 0.9%.
Bitcoin prices rose over after Trump posted on Truth Social that his administration was moving forward with a cryptocurrency strategic reserve. The original cryptocurrency was trading at close to $93,000 early Monday after trading around $84,000 on Friday.