NEW YORK (news agencies) — U.S. stocks drifted lower on Monday to compound their sharp losses from last week.
The S&P 500 dipped 0.5% after flipping between small gains and losses several times through the day. The relatively modest moves followed its 1.7% tumble on Friday, which came after several weaker-than-expected reports on the U.S. economy.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 33 points, or 0.1%, while the Nasdaq composite fell 1.2%.
Berkshire Hathaway climbed 4.1% for one of the market’s bigger gains after Warren Buffett’s company reported a jumped in operating profits for the latest quarter. But even there, the good news came with a bit of caution.
The owner of Geico, BNSF railroad and other businesses said over the weekend that it’s sitting on a mountain of $334.2 billion in unused cash. Such a large amount could indicate Buffett, who’s famous for buying stocks when prices are low, may not see much worth purchasing in a market that critics say looks too expensive.
Starbucks rose 1.3% after saying it would cut 1,100 corporate jobs and leave several hundred more positions unfilled as new CEO Brian Niccol tries to make it a leaner operation.
Domino’s Pizza sank 1.5% after reporting results for the latest quarter that just missed analysts’ expectations. Its international operations were a standout, but a closely tracked sales trend weakened for corporate-owned U.S. stores.
Big U.S. companies have broadly been reporting better profits for the last three months of 2024 than analysts expected, which is one of the main reasons the S&P 500 set a record before sliding at the end of last week. The pace of reports will slow this week, but several potentially market-moving updates are still on deck.
Chief among them is Nvidia, the company that’s become one of Wall Street’s most influential stocks because of what had been nearly insatiable demand for its chips. Wednesday will be the company’s first profit report since a Chinese upstart, DeepSeek, upended the artificial-intelligence industry by saying it developed a large language model that can compete with big U.S. rivals without having to use the top-flight, most expensive chips.
That called into question all the spending Wall Street had assumed would go into not only Nvidia’s chips but also the ecosystem that’s built around the AI boom, including electricity to power large data centers.
Nvidia’s stock bounced between gains and losses through Monday, helping to pull the S&P 500 and other indexes up and down in its wake. It ended up falling 3.1% and was the heaviest single weight on the S&P 500. Because of its massive size, Nvidia is the second-most influential stock on the S&P 500 after only Apple, and it alone accounted for more than a fifth of the index’s total return last year.
“There is very little room for Nvidia to disappoint analyst profit expectations this year, given its assumed leadership position in AI, already elevated valuations, and new developments and entrants in the space that could threaten its dominance over time,” according to Anthony Saglimbene, chief market strategist at Ameriprise.
Other big profit reports due this week include Home Depot’s on Tuesday and Salesforce’s on Wednesday.
All told, the S&P 500 fell 29.88 points to 5,983.25. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 33.19 to 43,461.21, and the Nasdaq composite fell 237.08 to 19,286.92.
This upcoming week will also feature updates on consumer confidence and inflation, topics that are at the top of Wall Street’s agenda following last week’s slump.
Recent reports have shown that consumer sentiment is souring as expectations for inflation worsen, in part because of tariffs and other policies pushed by President Donald Trump.
Stubbornly high inflation could prevent the Federal Reserve from delivering more relief for the economy and financial markets through lower interest rates.
The Fed has been holding its main interest rate steady after sharply cutting it through the end of last year. At their last policy meeting in January, Fed officials suggested they may stay on hold for a while given worries about how Trump’s proposed tariffs and mass deportations of migrants, along with other factors, could push upward on inflation.
While lower rates can boost the economy, they can also encourage spending that puts upward pressure on inflation.
In the bond market, Treasury yields eased ahead of the upcoming reports. The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 4.40% from 4.43% late Friday.
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