Wall Street drifts to a mixed finish ahead of a frenetic week

U.S. stock indexes drifted to a mixed finish Monday to kick off a week full of earnings reports from Wall Street’s most influential companies and a Federal Reserve meeting on interest rates.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index edged up by 4.44 points, or 0.1%, to 5,463.54, coming off its first back-to-back weekly losses since April. The Dow Jones industrial average slipped 49.41 points, or 0.1%, to 40,539.93, and the Nasdaq composite added 12.32 points, or 0.1%, to close at 17,370.20.

ON Semiconductor helped lead the market with a jump of 11.5% after the supplier to the auto and other industries reported stronger profit for the spring than analysts expected. McDonald’s rose 3.7% despite reporting profit and revenue for the latest quarter that fell shy of forecasts. Analysts said the performance of its U.S. restaurants wasn’t as bad as some investors had feared.

They helped offset slides for oil-and-gas companies, which were some of the heaviest weights on the market after the price of oil sank back toward where it was two months ago. ConocoPhillips lost 1.6% and Exxon Mobil fell 1% amid worries about how much crude China’s faltering economy will burn.

Several of Wall Street’s biggest names are set to report their own results this week: Microsoft on Tuesday, Meta Platforms on Wednesday and Apple and Amazon on Thursday. Their stock movements carry extra weight on Wall Street because they are among the market’s largest by total value.

Such Big Tech stocks drove the S&P 500 to dozens of records this year, in part on investors’ frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology, but they ran out of momentum this month amid criticism they’ve grown too expensive and as alternatives began to look more attractive. Last week, investors found profit reports from Tesla and Alphabet underwhelming, which raised concerns that other stocks in what’s known as the “Magnificent Seven” group of Big Tech stocks could also fail to impress.

“AI hype days are over,” according to Bank of America strategists led by Savita Subramanian. “Time to show monetization.”

What’s helped support the U.S. stock market even as those Big Tech behemoths weakened has been strength from other areas that had been beaten down by high interest rates meant to get inflation under control. Smaller stocks in particular soared on expectations that slowing inflation will get the Federal Reserve to soon begin cutting interest rates.

That pattern unwound a bit Monday, as the majority of Big Tech stocks rose while the smaller stocks in the Russell 2000 index slumped 1.1%. But the Russell 2000 is still up by a market-leading 9.2% for the month so far.

The Fed will hold its latest policy meeting on interest rates this week, and an announcement will come Wednesday. Virtually no one expects a move then, but the widespread expectation is that the central bank will begin easing at its following meeting in September.

Treasury yields held relatively steady in the bond market, and the yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 4.17% from 4.19% late Friday. It was as high as 4.70% in April.

In stock markets abroad, Japan’s Nikkei 225 index jumped 2.1%. Its central bank will also announce a decision on interest rates this week. Expectations are for it to raise rates.

Indexes rose 1.3% in Hong Kong and were roughly flat in Shanghai after official data released Saturday showed industrial profits rose 3.5% in the first half of 2024 from a year earlier. That was a glimmer of positive news after recent cuts to interest rates and other piecemeal stimulus that followed a top-level policy meeting of the ruling Communist Party this month.

In London, the FTSE 100 edged up by 0.1% ahead of a meeting for the Bank of England this week, where some investors expect to see a cut in interest rates.

Choe writes for the Associated Press.