NEW YORK: Wall Street’s main indexes were mixed on Monday with the Nasdaq boosted by gains in Nvidia ahead of its earnings this week, while investors awaited a meeting of central bankers for more clues on the US interest rate path.
Nvidia, which sharply outperformed its megacap peers with gains of nearly 6% last week, climbed 4.5% as HSBC raised its price target on the stock to $780, the second highest on Wall Street.
The company is expected to forecast quarterly revenue above analysts’ estimates when it reports results on Wednesday. Its results will help determine whether this year’s stock market rally, fueled by optimism around the potential for artificial intelligence, will continue. “(Nvidia earnings) are important for the next step in the marmarket. Ifey were to disappoint, you would see risk-off (sentiment) for a number of days until we get more information from the Fed on Friday,” said Thomas Hayes, chairman at Great Hill Capital LLC. Other beaten-down growth shares gained as well, with Tesla snapping six straight sessions of losses to rise 4.4% after brokerage Baird Equity Research added the stock to its “best ideas” list. At 11:45 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 217.62 points, or 0.63%, at 34,283.04, the S&P 500 was down 6.86 points, or 0.16%, at 4,362.85, and the Nasdaq Composite was up 40.77 points, or 0.31%, at 13,331.55. The S&P 500 information technology sector, which houses Nvidia, rose 0.7% while real estate and utilities were a drag, down more than 1% each.
Investors are now keenly waiting for comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday at a meeting of central bankers at Jackson Hole in Wyoming that begins on Aug. 24, to gauge the direction for interest rates.
The strong advance in equities this year on signs of cooling inflation has stalled in August, with the S&P 500 losing more than 5% from its intra-day high in late July. Pressuring stocks, the yield on the 10-year note rose to a 15-year high of 4.35% on Monday as recent evidence of a robust US economy stokes concerns the Federal Reserve could keep rates higher for longer. Traders’ bets for a pause in rate hikes in September stood at nearly 86.5%, according to the CME Group’s Fedwatch tool.
Among other stocks, Palo Alto Networks jumped 15.9% as the cybersecurity firm forecast annual billings above expectations. The Dow declined as Johnson and Johnson lost 2.6% after the healthcare conglomerate said it was expecting to retain a stake of about 9.5% in its newly separated consumer health unit, Kenvue. Also hurting the cyclicals-heavy index was a 1.4% fall in Goldman Sachs after the Wall Street bank said it was weighing the sale of a part of its wealth business.
VMware gained 4.1% after UK’s competition regulator cleared Broadcom’s purchase of the cloud computing firm. Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 2.38-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and a 1.46-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
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