The S&P 500 and the Dow industrials edged lower on Monday, weighed down by losses in healthcare heavyweight Johnson & Johnson, while the Nasdaq hit a record high ahead of a big week of technology earnings reports.
The major U.S. indexes are trading around record-high levels with a huge batch of second-quarter corporate reports due this week.
Google parent Alphabet
"The tech sector is the leading sector so far this year,"said John Augustine, chief investment officer at Huntington Bank in Columbus, Ohio. “It’s going to be important that those FANG stocks set a positive tone and give positive guidance."
Of the other FANG stocks, Netflix
The Dow Jones Industrial Average <.dji> fell 39.26 points, or 0.18 percent, to 21,540.81, the S&P 500 <.spx> lost 1.3 points, or 0.05 percent, to 2,471.24 and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 15.71 points, or 0.25 percent, to 6,403.47.
Johnson & Johnson shares were down 1.5 percent, the biggest weights on the S&P 500 and the Dow. J&J faces discounted competition to its big-selling rheumatoid arthritis drug.
The market`s run to record highs, including a 10.4 percent rise for the S&P 500 in 2017, has left equities relatively expensive and investors counting on earnings to justify the valuations. The S&P 500 is trading at around 17.7 times earnings estimates for the next 12 months, well above their long-term average of 15 times.
With more than one-fifth of the S&P 500 having reported results, earnings are now expected to have climbed 8.8 percent in the second quarter, up from a projection of an 8-percent rise at the start of the month, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
In other earnings news, Halliburton
Hasbro
Hibbett Sports
WebMD Health Corp
Investors are also looking ahead to the Federal Reserve statement due on Wednesday for clues about the future path of interest rate hikes.
Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.41-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.01-to-1 ratio favored advancers.
(This article has not been edited by Zeebiz editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
01:39 AM IST