2023-05-22 23:54:02
By Saeed Azhar and Shreyashi Sanyal
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street’s major stock indexes ended the session with no single direction on Monday, with the Nasdaq rising on boost from Alphabet and Meta Platforms, while the S&P 500 closed nearly flat as investors avoided bigger bets ahead of a new round of talks on raising the US debt ceiling.
US President Joe Biden and Republican Congressional Leader Kevin McCarthy are due to meet later on Monday to discuss raising the federal debt ceiling, just 10 days before the deadline.
“Investors are basically saying, ‘We’re giving them at least a 60:40 odds that they’ll reach a deal on time,'” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research.
“A deal could simply be the extension, which would postpone a decision on the debt ceiling until they also discuss budgets in September.”
The S&P 500 closed with a positive variation of 0.02%, at 4,192.63 points. The Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 0.50% to 12,720.78 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.42% to 33,286.58 points.
Comments by the President of the Federal Reserve (Fed) of St. Louis, James Bullard, that the US central bank may still need to raise the benchmark interest rate by another half a percentage point this year boosted the dollar.
Investors will look for clues about the Fed’s monetary policy in a series of statements by central bank officials and economic indicators this week.
The reading of the PCE index, the Fed’s preferred inflation index, is due on Friday.
Technology-related stocks were the session’s biggest performers, with Alphabet up 1.87% and Meta Platforms up 1.1%.
Regional bank stocks were boosted by news that PacWest Bancorp has agreed to sell a backlog of 74 construction loans to a subsidiary of Kennedy-Wilson Holdings.
(Reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal and Shristi Achar A in Bengaluru and Saeed Azhar in New York; Additional reporting by Sinead Carew).
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