US close: Mixed performance on the Street ahead of earnings onslaught
Wall Street stocks put in a mixed performance on Monday as one of the busiest weeks on the first-quarter earnings calendar got underway.
At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.18% at 33,981.57, while the S&P 500 was 0.18% firmer at 4,187.62 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 0.87% stronger at 14,138.78.
The Dow closed 61.92 points lower on Monday, cutting into gains recorded on Friday as major indices recovered from worries about President Joe Biden hiking the capital gains tax on the nation's richest citizens.
Corporate earnings were again firmly in focus on Monday, with Tesla reporting a 74% surge in quarterly revenues and a record quarterly net income of $438.0m.
Many of the US' largest tech companies will report results throughout the course of the week, including Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google parent company Alphabet, while Boeing, Ford and Caterpillar will also post earnings before the week is out.
Investors were also looking ahead to the Federal Reserve's two-day policy meeting, starting on Tuesday, the debut of Biden's "American Families Plan" and more inflation data.
On the macro front, new orders for manufactured durable goods increased by 5% in March to $256.3bn, according to the Census Bureau. This increase, up in ten of the last eleven months, followed a 0.9% decrease in February. Excluding transportation, new orders increased 1.6%.
Capital goods orders rebounded less than expected in March, according to the Commerce Department, which said orders for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft rose 0.9% last month, missing estimates for an increase of 2.2%.
Elsewhere, Texas factory activity expanded at a solid clip in April, according to the Dallas Federal Reserve, with the central bank's production index, a key measure of state manufacturing conditions, falling 14 points to 34.0 - a reading still well above average and indicative of "robust output growth".