Tech stock increase highlights slow day

NEW YORK — Tech stocks were the standouts in an otherwise sluggish day of trading Monday, as investors gear up for the arrival of the heart of earnings reporting season.

Apple, Intel and several chip makers jumped more than 2%, and technology stocks in the S&P 500 climbed 1.2%. But the other 10 sectors that make up the index were evenly split between gainers and losers, and none moved by more than 0.5%.

More action may arrive in the next two weeks, when a tidal wave of earnings reports is on the schedule. Roughly three-fifths of S&P 500 companies are set to update investors on how much profit they made from April through June, and expectations are generally low.

A slowing global economy and rising costs are weighing on companies, and many investors are more interested in what CEOS say about how President Donald Trump's trade war will affect their future profits than in their results for the spring.

So far this reporting season, which is still in its early going, stocks have dropped a bit more than usual when a company falls short of Wall Street's earnings expectations. Among the 16% of big S&P 500 companies that have already reported their secondquarter results, the average decline has been 2.7% following an earnings miss, slightly more than the 2.6% average over the past five years, according to Factset.

The other big looming event for markets is the Federal Reserve's meeting at the end of the month, when investors expect the central bank to cut interest rates for the first time in more than a decade. Some investors have recently scaled back their expectations for how much the Fed may cut rates, down to a quarter of a percentage point from a half point.

Volvo is recalling about a half-million cars worldwide because of a faulty engine component that may in extreme cases cause a vehicle to catch fire.

Bayer agreed to sell the Dr. Scholl’s foot-care business to Yellow Wood Partners for $585 million, another effort by the German company to streamline operations amid investor criticism of its business model.

Chief Executive Officer Werner Baumann is under pressure to prove that Bayer’s dual focus on agriculture and health care makes sense after last year’s $63 billion takeover of Monsanto. The drugmaker’s shares have tumbled more than 35% since the deal closed, hurt by an avalanche of lawsuits in the U.S. alleging that topselling weed killer Roundup, which Bayer inherited from Monsanto, causes cancer.

Bayer vowed in November to cut 12,000 jobs around the world — about 10% of its workforce — and exit its animal-health business, along with parts of its consumer health division. In May, it agreed to sell its Coppertone brand of sun-care products for $550 million to Beiersdorf.

Bayer bought Dr. Scholl’s in 2014 as part of its $14 billion takeover of Merck & Co.’s consumer-health unit.