by US stocks were mixed on Monday as investors braced for another week of potentially market-changing events: the Nov. 8 midterm elections and October’s consumer price data.
The S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose 0.1%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) rose 160 points, or about 0.5%. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) lost steam after opening higher, with losses falling 0.2% after the index posted its worst weekly decline since January.
A flurry of bad corporate news has refocused the wreckage of tech stocks after last week’s disappointment sent the industry’s biggest gainers — Apple ( AAPL ), Amazon.com ( AMZN ) and Alphabet ( GOOGL ) — to more than 10 losses. % each.
Shares of Apple ( AAPL ) fell more than 1 percent after the company said in a statement on Sunday that it expects fewer shipments of its latest premium iPhones than previously expected, citing the COVID-19 lockdowns in China that have hurt operations at its largest smartphone maker, Foxconn.
Also among tech giants, Facebook parent Meta ( META ), which was down 73% at Friday’s close from a year earlier and is the S&P 500’s worst performer this year, is now expected to begin widespread layoffs this week. According to a report published by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. The stock rose almost 6 percent.
Elsewhere in the market, Carvana shares fell 15 percent to a five-year low after a Morgan Stanley analyst said last week that Autotrader could be worth as much as $1.
Election Day could keep investors on edge as dozens of key races determine which political party dominates the congressional agenda. Wall Street has historically favored a divided Congress or White House, and the impasse makes it difficult to implement potentially unfavorable legislation.
“We go back to 1929 and, barring the Great Depression, some of the S&P 500’s best annual returns have been seen when a sitting president doesn’t have full control of both sides of Congress,” Verdence Capital Advisors CIO Megan Horneman and CEO Leo Kelly said in an emailed comment. “This may be because the market is not expecting major legislative changes with Congress divided.”
While political campaigns have put the spotlight on fiscal leadership, some strategists argue that medium-term outcomes rarely affect financial markets outside of short-term volatility.
“Markets are more influenced by expected financial conditions and economic catalysts than the midterm elections,” Dave Sekera, chief market strategist at Morningstar, said in a recent note. “Historically, some analyzes have shown that equity markets tend to underperform before the medium term and then outperform.”
However, the October consumer price index (CPI), announced on Thursday, will certainly shake up the stock market. Another hot inflation number may strengthen expectations that the central bank will raise its key interest rate more than originally predicted.
Economists polled by Bloomberg see the CPI at 7.9% on the year, down from September’s 8.2% annual growth. Core CPI, which strips out the volatile food and energy components of the measure, is forecast at 6.5%, little changed from last month’s 6.6%.
“Headline inflation has likely peaked, but core inflation reached its post-pandemic peak just last month,” Baird Investment Strategy analyst Ross Mayfield said in an email. “While the Fed has hinted that they see reasons to slow down, inflation — even at its peak — remains far too high for comfort.”
“Until the Fed signals that a ‘pivot’ is near, things may remain challenging,” he added.
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Alexandra Semenova is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @alexandraandnyc
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