Dow shakes off trade woes to recover

After spending much of the day in negative territory, stocks largely finished higher on Monday, shaking off a slew of concerns, including rising trade tensions between the U.S. and China, the delayed Brexit vote and a worrisome signal from the bond market.

The Dow Jones industrial average erased a 507-point decline to close higher by 34 points, or 0.1 percent, at 24,423 on Monday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 increased by nearly 5 points, or 0.2 percent, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq ended 0.7 percent higher. Only the Russell 2000, an index of small-company stocks, closed lower, down 0.3 percent.

The gains Monday follow a painful showing last week when the Dow finished 4.5 percent lower.

“Everything is all over the map. Investors are trying to find some kind of direction,” said Chris Cook, founder and president of Beacon Capital Management. “But it’s almost as if there’s a buffet of things to worry about.”

Stocks quickly slid after the market opened Monday, a day after China summoned the U.S. ambassador to protest the arrest of telecom giant Huawei’s chief financial officer. That put more pressure on the two countries as they work through trade issues.

Then, on Monday, British Prime Minister Theresa May added to the global uncertainty by delaying Tuesday’s vote on the U.K.’s plan to leave the European Union because she didn’t have enough support for the measure to pass.

“That was kind of a one-two punch for a technically susceptible market,” said John Lynch, chief investment strat- egist at LPL Financial.

While Lynch noted that other indicators – such as last week’s strong manufacturing and services numbers – support a solid economy, “these fundamentals are not enough, and the market will do what it wants to do,” he said.

This week, investors are eyeing two key measures of inflation – the producer price index on Tuesday and the consumer price index on Wednesday – that could indicate future interest rate moves by the Federal Reserve. The central bank is widely expected to increase rates again when it meets next week, but Fed officials recently have hinted at a slowdown in future hikes.

Market watchers also remain jittery after the two-year Treasury note yield rose above the interest paid by its fiveyear counterpart last week.