U.S. Stocks Steady as Investors Weigh Trade Talks
May 22 2018 - 12:44PM
Dow Jones News
By Riva Gold
-- FTSE 100 breaks new ground
-- Italian assets steady
-- Brent crude rises
U.S. stocks bounced between small gains and losses Tuesday, a
day after waning concerns about trade tensions between the U.S. and
China helped send major global indexes to their highest close in
months.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 40 points, or 0.2%, to
24973, after rising Monday above 25,000 for the first time since
March. The S&P 500 climbed 0.1%, and the Nasdaq Composite added
less than 0.1%.
Six of the 11 sectors in the S&P 500 rose, led by shares in
financials and telecom companies, which both rose 1.1%.
In corporate news, shares of Micron Technology climbed 7.4%
after the memory-chip maker unveiled a $10 billion stock-buyback
plan. Shares of J.C. Penney fell 4% after Chief Executive Marvin
Ellison said he was leaving the company to run Lowe's. Shares of
Lowe's fell 1.4%.
Tuesday's mixed tone in markets came after industrial companies
rallied on Wall Street on Monday after Treasury Secretary Steven
Mnuchin said the U.S. would suspend its efforts to apply tariffs to
$150 billion in Chinese imports.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that the U.S. and China
agreed on the broad outline of a deal that would save imperiled
Chinese telecom giant ZTE. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that
he "envisions" the company being fined as much as $1.3 billion and
noted there is no final agreement regarding the firm.
"Anything tied to economic growth and the business cycle is
going to be bid up in this environment where we get news that maybe
the 'trade war' is less of a risk than it was prior to the
comments," said Jason Ware, chief investment officer at Albion
Financial Group.
Recent news "suggests that things are on hold for now, as far as
this escalating into something that would be truly bad for the
global economy and therefore global markets," he added.
For some, news around trade without specifics carries less
weight.
Brian Smoluch, portfolio manager for Hood River Capital
Management, who focuses on small-cap firms, said general comments
on trade with China are "too general to make any sort of concrete
investment move."
"The [market's] short-term gyrations are unpredictable," he
said.
The Stoxx Europe 600 edged up 0.3%, while the U.K.'s FTSE 100
rose 0.2% to a record close, supported for most of May by gains in
the U.S. dollar against the British pound and a rally in commodity
prices that has lifted shares of energy and mining companies.
The WSJ Dollar Index was about flat, while U.S. crude added 0.1%
to $72.43.
In Asia, small earlier gains in the yen pressured Japanese
multinationals, with the Nikkei edging down 0.2% from a two-month
high.
--Allison Prang and Giovanni Legorano contributed to this
article.
Write to Riva Gold at riva.gold@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 22, 2018 13:29 ET (17:29 GMT)
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