NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is holding near its records on Monday, ahead of a week likely to be dominated by updates from the head of the Federal Reserve and from some of the biggest U.S. retailers.
The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged, coming off its first loss after setting an all-time high in three consecutive days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was also roughly flat, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was edging up by 0.1%.
Novo Nordisk’s stock that trades in the United States rose 5.3% after the Danish company said U.S. regulators approved its Wegovy drug as part of a treatment for a liver disease found in many overweight and obese people.
Soho House, a membership club with locations around the world, jumped 16.2% after announcing a deal where an investor group led by hotel-operator MCR would pay $9 in cash for its shares.
Several of the country’s largest retailers, meanwhile, were mixed ahead of their profit reports that are scheduled for later in the week. Home Depot, which will report on Tuesday, slipped 0.7%.
Target rose 1.7% ahead of its report on Wednesday, and Walmart added 0.2% before its report on Thursday.
They, along with companies like Estee Lauder and Ross Stores, could offer a window into how different types of U.S. households are holding up when the job market seems to have morphed into one where relatively few workers are getting fired but also hired.
Just like a small group of wealthy households are separating from the rest of the country, a handful of huge U.S. companies are dominating the U.S. stock market, in part because of a boom in spending around artificial-intelligence technology.
This separation of “haves” and “have nots” in the stock market could be increasing the risk, with many companies potentially facing trouble if the economy stagnates and inflation is high, according to Lisa Shalett, chief investment officer at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. The danger is that investors could look at how much the broad S&P 500 has surged and “extrapolate the success of the few to the gains of the many.”
On Friday, the focus will swing to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which has been the home of many big policy announcements from the Federal Reserve in past years. There, Fed Chair Jerome Powell will give a speech, and investors are hoping to hear how his mind has changed about interest rates since he said last month that he wanted to wait longer before cutting interest rates.
The fear at that time was that President Donald Trump’s tariffs could push inflation higher. Now, though, the bigger fear could be about the slowing U.S. job market following a disappointingly weak report on jobs that came just after the Fed’s last meeting.
The Fed’s two mandates are keeping the job market healthy while also keeping a lid on inflation, and helping one can often mean hurting the other in the short term. Lower rates can boost investment prices and the economy by making it cheaper for U.S. households and businesses to borrow to buy houses, cars or equipment, but they also risk worsening inflation.
Some inflation data since the Fed’s last meeting has come in mixed, further muddying the picture, but traders are still strongly expecting the Fed to cut its main interest rate for the first time this year at its next meeting in September. The hope is that Powell could give a nod to that.
Hopes for lower rates have pulled Treasury yields lower lately, and they edged down a bit more on Monday.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 4.31% from 4.33% late Friday.
In stock markets abroad, indexes fell slightly in Europe in their first trading after Trump’s inconclusive summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday about the war in Ukraine. Trump is set to meet later in the day with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders.
In Asia, indexes were mixed, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 rising 0.8% and South Korea’s Kospi falling 1.5%.
___
AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
The Latest
Featured
