Stocks move lower
NEW YORK — U. S. stocks finished lower Monday for the second time in the last three trading days. Banks gave back some of their recent gains after a jump in interest rates last week sent them sharply higher.
Mining and chemical companies declined after China cut its economic growth forecast, and airlines slumped after a Delta said its business isn’t improving as fast as it hoped. There were few winners to be found on Wall Street as more than two- thirds of the stocks on the New York Stock Exchange fell. That included consistent losses for banks, investment firms and insurance companies.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 7.81 points, or 0.3 percent, to 2,375.31. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 51.37 points, or 0.2 percent, to 20,954.34. The Nasdaq composite dropped 21.58 points, or 0.4 percent, to 5,849.17. The Russell 2000 index of smaller- company stocks sank 9.88 points, or 0.7 percent, to 1,384.25.
All four indexes reached all- time highs last week, and the S& P 500 and Nasdaq have risen for six weeks in a row. That’s on top of a surge in November and December. Those rapid gains the last few months have prompted caution by some analysts.
“We think there’s a reasonable chance at the end of the year we’ll be a little bit lower than we are right now,” said Scott Wren, senior global equity strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.
Over the weekend Premier Li Keqiang, China’s top economic official, trimmed the country’s growth target to 6.5 percent. The Chinese economy is the second- largest in the world, and the prospect of slower growth there hurt mining, packaging and chemical companies and sent the price of copper lower.
But investors weren’t nearly as alarmed about the latest signs of slowing growth in China as they were in the past. Stocks plunged in early 2016 as investors worried the Chinese economy might weaken in a hurry and drag the global economy down with it. Wren said Wall Street now thinks growth in China will slow down gradually.
“The market’s pretty comfortable with this controlled slowdown,” he said. “A lot of that sell- off was due to the fear that Chinese growth was … basically going to collapse,” he said.
Delta Air Lines gave a disappointing revenue projection for the second quarter and its stock fell $ 1.28, or 2.6 percent, to $ 48.85. United and American Airlines each fell 3 percent.
Bond prices continued to slip. The yield on the 10- year Treasury note rose to 2.49 percent from 2.48 percent. Bond yields jumped last week as investors grew more certain the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates this month.
Companies that pay big dividends, like real estate investment trusts, fell again. Those stocks are often compared to bonds because of their high yields, and higher bond yields make them less appealing to investors.
Benchmark U. S. crude fell 13 cents to $ 53.20 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price international oils, rose 11 cents to $ 56.01 a barrel in London.
Gold fell $ 1 to $ 1,225.50 an ounce. Silver rose 3 cents to $ 17.77 an ounce. Copper fell 4 cents, or 1.7 percent, to $ 2.65 a pound.