Oil’s up, but stocks close mostly lower
Wall Street capped a day of mostly sideways trading Monday with a slight gain for the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 index, as an increase in oil prices sent energy stocks broadly higher.
Energy sector stocks climbed as the price of crude oil hit its highest level since October after the U.S. government moved to further block Iranian oil exports.
Even with the surge in energy stocks, losses in banks, real estate companies and elsewhere in the market led the major U.S. indexes to finish mostly lower. Smaller company stocks fell more than the rest of the market.
Home builders slumped after a report showing that sales of previously owned U.S. homes fell in March.
Monday’s listless day of trading was in line with a relatively calm stretch for the U.S. stock market in recent weeks. The market has been hovering near all-time highs after following up a nearly 20% plummet late last year with a nearly mirror-opposite rebound.
Investors are focused on a cavalcade of corporate earnings reports this week and new data that will give them a read on how much U.S. economic growth slowed during the first three months of the year.
The S&P 500 wavered between gains and losses for much of the day before eking out a gain of 2.94 points, or 0.1%, to 2,907.97. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 48.49 points, or 0.2%, to 26,511.05. The Nasdaq composite gained 17.2 points, or 0.2%, to 8,015.27. The Russell 2000 index of small-cap stocks dropped 5.7 points, or 0.4%, to 1,560.04.
Bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 2.59% from 2.55% late Thursday.
Benchmark U.S. crude surged 2.7% to $65.70 per barrel. Brent crude rose 2.9% to close at $74.04 per barrel.
The Trump administration said it will no longer exempt any countries from U.S. sanctions if they continue to buy Iranian oil, including China and Japan, the world’s second- and thirdlargest economies.
President Trump made the move with the intent of bringing Iran’s oil exports to zero.
Gold rose 0.1% to $1,277.60 an ounce, silver gained 0.1% to $14.98 an ounce and copper fell 0.6% to $2.90 a pound.
The dollar edged up to 111.94 Japanese yen from 111.93 yen late Friday. The euro strengthened to $1.1259 from $1.1246.