By Stephen Culp
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Wall Street stocks showed little conviction on Monday and gold eased as market participants watched for signs of progress in tariff negotiations at the top of an eventful week of corporate earnings and economic data.
Weakness in the tech sector held the Nasdaq back, but gold lost ground and benchmark U.S. Treasury yields oscillated.
“The news has evened out,” Thomas Martin, Senior Portfolio Manager at GLOBALT in Atlanta. “There’s not really any news today that’s market-moving.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday said many of the top U.S. trading partners have made “very good” tariff proposals, adding that China’s recent moves to exempt certain U.S. goods from its retaliatory tariffs showed a willingness to de-escalate trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
“We just keep on trying to dial into what the trade negotiations are going to be like,” Martin added. “And it’s this combination of public statements versus what’s really going on behind the scenes.”
Despite hopes for progress, economists polled by Reuters say the risk of global recession is high as a result of Trump’s tariffs; the same group of economists expected the world economy to grow at a healthy clip a mere three months ago.
First quarter earnings season heats up this week, with Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon.com among the high-profile results on the docket.
While Monday was quiet with respect to U.S. economic data, the week is back-end loaded with closely watched indicators such as Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE), the Institute for Supply Management’s purchasing managers’ index (PMI), an advance take on U.S. GDP and the April employment report.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 146.72 points, or 0.40%, to 40,275.27, the S&P 500 rose 6.25 points, or 0.11%, to 5,531.38 and the Nasdaq Composite fell 15.79 points, or 0.09%, to 17,367.15.
European shares gained ground on trade negotiation optimism.
MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe rose 3.46 points, or 0.42%, to 828.20.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 0.74%, while Europe’s broad FTSEurofirst 300 index rose 14.58 points, or 0.71%.
Emerging market stocks rose 6.24 points, or 0.57%, to 1,103.34. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan closed higher by 0.58%, to 573.95, while Japan’s Nikkei rose 134.25 points, or 0.38%, to 35,839.99.
The yield on benchmark U.S. 10-year notes fell 2.1 basis points to 4.245%, from 4.266% late on Friday.The 30-year bond yield fell 2.8 basis points to 4.7099% from 4.738% late on Friday.
The 2-year note yield, which typically moves in step with interest rate expectations for the Federal Reserve, fell 2.6 basis points to 3.736%, from 3.762% late on Friday.
The dollar edged lower as investors awaited further trade talks progress and girded themselves for an eventful week.
The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies including the yen and the euro, fell 0.59% to 99.16, with the euro up 0.33% at $1.1398.
Against the Japanese yen, the dollar weakened 0.68% to 142.69.
Sterling strengthened 0.76% to $1.3415.The Mexican peso weakened 0.09% versus the dollar at 19.555.
The Canadian dollar strengthened 0.21% versus the greenback to C$1.38 per dollar. Canadians are going to the polls on Monday after an election campaign in which U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and musings about annexing Canada became the central issue.
Crude oil softened as investors weighed a potential supply increase from OPEC+ amid ongoing trade uncertainties.
U.S. crude fell 0.94% to $62.43 a barrel and Brent fell to $66.17 per barrel, down 1.05% on the day.
Gold prices advanced in opposition to the easing greenback.
Spot gold rose 0.27% to $3,327.19 an ounce. U.S. gold futures rose 0.06% to $3,284.50 an ounce.
(Reporting by Stephen Culp; Additional reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe in London; Wayne Cole in Sydney; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
