Stocks – Wall Street Drops Ahead of Fed, Tariff Deadline

Investing.com – Stocks moved lower on Monday ahead of a Federal Reserve meeting this week and worries about U.S.-China trade talks.

The dropped 0.32%. The slid 0.38%, and the index fell 0.45%.

The pullback was probably to be expected after Friday’s big rally triggered by the bullish November jobs report.

The Fed will hold its last meeting of the year starting Tuesday. The two-day affair will end Wednesday afternoon with the announcement. Investors tracked by Investing.com are overwhelmingly betting on the Fed standing pat on the key fed rate of 1.5% to 1.75%.

The trade issue at hand is what happens if the United States and China can’t come to a phase one agreement by Sunday night and if President Donald Trump will impose a new round of tariffs on goods imported from China, including cellphones and other electronics.

Larry Kudlow, Trump’s economic advisor, said the Sunday deadline was not arbitrary, and there’s some betting in Washington that the new tariffs won’t be imposed, but tariffs imposed in the fall will be left in place.

What’s not clear is how long can either side hold until it says “no mas.” A reason for Monday’s decline was an overnight report that Chinese exports in November were down 1.1% from October. Investors were expecting a small gain.

The China concerns weighed on tech and tech-related shares. Apple (NASDAQ:), Goldman Sachs (NYSE:) and Boeing (NYSE:) were the weakest stocks, with Home Depot (NYSE:) and IBM (NYSE:) the leaders.

The 11 S&P 500 sectors fell back with only consumer staples, consumer discretionary and real estate stocks higher.

The weakest sectors were healthcare and utilities.

were off modestly on the day, as was . The Treasury yield fell to 1.833% from Friday’s 1.843%.

Disclaimer: Fusion Media would like to remind you that the data contained in this website is not necessarily real-time nor accurate. All CFDs (stocks, indexes, futures) and Forex prices are not provided by exchanges but rather by market makers, and so prices may not be accurate and may differ from the actual market price, meaning prices are indicative and not appropriate for trading purposes. Therefore Fusion Media doesn`t bear any responsibility for any trading losses you might incur as a result of using this data.

Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.