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U.S. stocks rose at the start of Monday as investors shifted their focus to corporate earnings starting early this week and the vagaries of coronavirus stimulus negotiations.
Attention also has been trained on the U.S. presidential elections which stand just about three weeks away.
Meanwhile, the bond market is closed on Monday in observance of the Columbus Day holiday, also celebrated by many as Indigenous Peoples Day.
How are stock indexes performing?
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.52% rose 90 points, or 0.3%, to 28,677. The S&P 500 SPX, +0.80% added 24 points, or 0.7%, to 3,501, while the Nasdaq Composite COMP, +1.22% climbed 147 points, or 1.3%, to 11,727.
On Friday, the Dow posted a 3.3% weekly gain, representing the sharpest weekly rise since Aug. 7. The S&P 500 SPX, +0.80% ose 3.8% over the period and the Nasdaq Composite rallied by 4.6%. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq posted their best weekly percentage gains since the period ended July 2, according to FactSet.
What’s driving the market?
Prospects for another fiscalstimulus package appeared to dim, as Democrats over the weekend rejected a $1.9 trillion proposal from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, representing the Trump administration’s most generous aid proposal thus far.
“This past week, the president demonstrated very clearly that he has not taken the war against the virus seriously, personally or nationally. This attitude is reflected in the grossly inadequate response we finally received from the administration on Saturday,” wrote Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a Sunday letter. “Until these serious issues are resolved, we remain at an impasse.”
During an interview with Fox News, President Donald Trump cast Pelosi as a point of resistance in getting additional help for out-of-work Americans and troubled businesses. “Republicans want to do it. We’re having a hard time with Nancy Pelosi,” he said Sunday.
On-again-off-again negotiations over additional stimulus have been one of the main catalysts for the markets over the past few months.
A lack of fresh aid may force investors to turn to the next round of corporate earnings and the elections, with a little over 20 days remaining in the race for the Oval Office between former Vice President Joe Biden, who has led in most major national polls, and Republican incumbent Trump.
Read: Financial markets have waited patiently for a stimulus package — that might change soon
“Stock markets have been surprisingly resilient over the last week or so, despite the increasingly diminishing short term prospect of a U.S. stimulus deal, against a backdrop of rising infection rates across Europe, and the rising likelihood of further restrictions,” wrote Michael Hewson, chief analyst at CMC Markets UK.
“One reason behind recent stock market resilience could be a growing belief that whoever wins next month, with the polls increasingly leaning towards Biden, there will be a sizable fiscal stimulus coming whoever wins, with the only unknown being around the size of any possible package,” wrote the CMC analyst in a Monday report.
Meanwhile, S&P 500 companies’ overall earnings performance are expected to be less-bad than the second quarter, when earnings fell the most since the 2008 financial crisis, according to FactSet data. The aggregate blended year-over-year growth estimate per share, which includes some earnings already reported and the average analyst estimates of coming results, is for a negative 20.5% as of the end of last week, following a 31.4% plunge in the second quarter.
Investors may be more focused on the rate of change in the decline, rather than how far earnings are falling, MarketWatch’s Ciara Linnane and Tomi Kilgore report.
Separately, the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe was forcing some reimplementation of lockdown measures. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was expected to outline the restrictions in a statement to the public on Monday.
In Asia, China’s equity market were ebullient on optimism that President Xi Jinping is planning to further open parts of the economy to outside investment.
Which companies are in focus?
- Bandwidth Inc. BAND, +2.56% shares were up 2.1% after it announced Monday an agreement to buy Europe-based cloud communications company Voxbone.
- Shares of Twilio Inc. TWLO jumped 2.7% after the communications software company announced a deal to buy customer data platform company Segment in a $3.2 billion stock deal.
- Apple Inc. AAPL, +3.05% shares rose 2.9% ahead of its iPhone launch event on Tuesday.
What are other markets doing?
Mainland Chinese stocks jumped, with the Shanghai Composite SHCOMP, +2.64% rising 2.6%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index NIK, -0.25% fell 0.3%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index HSI, +2.20% gained 2.2%.
The pan-European Stoxx 600 Europe Index SXXP, +0.50% was up 0.8%. London’s FTSE 100 Z00, -0.20% rose 0.2%.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note TMUBMUSD10Y, 0.777% was at 0.779%. Bond yields move inversely to prices.
Oil futures CL.1, -3.44% fell 55 cents, or 1.4%, to $40.04 a barrel. Gold GOLD, +0.07% edged up 0.1% to $1,928.90 an ounce.
The ICE U.S. Dollar Index DXY, +0.01%, a measure of the greenback against its major rivals, was virtually flat.
