By Stephen Culp
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Wall Street stocks advanced on Monday, while Treasury yields softened at the top of a busy week of corporate earnings reports, as tariff negotiations between the U.S. and its trading partners ramped up in the face of a fast-approaching August 1 deadline.
All three major U.S. stock indexes moved higher in opposition to their European counterparts, gold notched a five-week high and the dollar weakened against the yen in the wake of Japan’s weekend elections. [.N]
Communication services and tech-adjacent momentum stocks were providing much of the upside muscle.
Second-quarter earnings season shifts into high gear this week, and the roster includes Alphabet and Tesla, two of the “Magnificent Seven” AI-associated megacap stocks. IBM and Intel are two high-profile tech names expected to report during a busy week that also includes a host of industrials, from General Motors to Union Pacific.
“We’ve had optimism around trade, and it’s early days but we’ve had pretty good earnings so far,” said Zachary Hill, head of portfolio management at Horizon Investments in Charlotte, North Carolina. “So it feels a little bit like a summertime, don’t-fight-the-trend environment at the moment.”
Trade negotiations have yet to yield any meaningful deals as the clock ticks down on U.S. President Donald Trump’s August 1 tariff deadline.
“The market’s view of who the tariffs hurt more or less has certainly waxed and waned over the last couple of months,” Hill added. “It’s been a pretty turbulent kind of news flow, I think a lot of U.S. investors have tuned it out.”
“That doesn’t appear to be the case when you look overseas at other markets.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC, “I think that what we need to do is examine the entire Federal Reserve institution and whether they have been successful,” further stoking concerns over the central bank’s autonomy following reports Trump is considering firing Chairman Jerome Powell.
“This is highly politically motivated and both Secretary Bessent, as well as President Trump, have a recognition and understanding of the enormous chaos that a non-independent Fed, or attempts to fire Chairman Powell would have on markets, and I don’t believe that is their objective or desire,” said Oliver Pursche, senior vice president at Wealthspire Advisors, in New York.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 18.66 points, or 0.04%, to 44,323.53, the S&P 500 rose 8.89 points, or 0.14%, to 6,305.68 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 78.52 points, or 0.38%, to 20,974.18.
