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Miner Newmont drops on Newcrest bid
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Chinese stocks fall on geopolitical jitters
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Indexes down: S&P 0.62%, Nasdaq 0.76%, Dow 0.24%,
(Adds comments; updates prices, details)
By Shubham Batra and Johann M Cherian
Feb 6 (Reuters) - U.S. stock indexes edged lower on
Monday as investors awaited Federal Reserve Chair Jerome
Powell's speech for clues on when the central bank would start
cutting interest rates.
The latest non-farm payrolls report highlighted the
resilience of the U.S. labor market and stoked fears of rates
staying higher for longer.
Focus will be on comments from Fed officials this week,
including Powell on Tuesday, for clues on any change in the
central bank's dovish rhetoric after data last week showed
services activity were strong in January.
"Right now everything is about what interest rates'
expectations are doing, and today they are up a decent amount,"
said George Cipolloni, portfolio manager at Penn Mutual Asset
Management.
"The Fed had initially pulled rates' (expectations) down on
Wednesday, but then the jobs number came out and it offset
everything that the Fed said."
Money market participants now see the benchmark rate peaking
at 5.1% by July, in line with what most policymakers have backed
repeatedly. Yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note extended
gains to a month's high. After being bruised in 2022, U.S. equities have recovered
strongly in 2023, led by megacap growth stocks amid short-lived
hopes that the Fed will temper its aggressive rate hikes, which
in turn could alleviate some pressure on equity valuations.
Tyson Foods Inc slipped 4.7% on missing analysts'
estimates for quarterly revenue and profit.
Analysts expect quarterly earnings of S&P 500 firms
declining 2.8% in the fourth quarter, according to Refinitiv.
Meanwhile, Tesla Inc bucked the overall trend with
a 2.1% gain after a U.S. jury found Chief Executive Elon Musk
and his company were not liable for misleading investors through
Musk's tweets in 2018 saying he had "funding secured" to take
the electric-vehicle maker private.
At 12:44 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 81.03 points, or 0.24%, at 33,844.98, the S&P 500 was down 25.44 points, or 0.62%, at 4,111.04, and the
Nasdaq Composite was down 91.59 points, or 0.76%, at
11,915.36.
All of the 11 major S&P 500 sector indexes were in the red,
with a 1.3% fall in materials leading declines.
Miner Newmont Corp slid 5.0% on its $16.9 billion
offer for Australian peer Newcrest Mining Ltd to build
a global gold behemoth.
U.S.-listed Chinese stocks such as Pinduoduo Inc and
Baidu Inc fell 3.1% and 1.0%, respectively, on
geopolitical concerns after a U.S. military fighter jet shot
down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South
Carolina on Saturday.
Traders will also await earnings reports from Walt Disney Co , PepsiCo Inc and Abbvie Inc this week.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers for a 3.95-to-1 ratio
on the NYSE and a 1.91-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P index recorded five new 52-week highs and one new
low, while the Nasdaq recorded 65 new highs and 17 new lows.
(Reporting by Shubham Batra and Johann M Cherian in Bengaluru;
Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Shounak Dasgupta)
