Stocks closed lower on Wall Street on Monday after an early gain evaporated in the afternoon.
The choppy trading came at the start of another busy week for profit reports from U.S. companies. The S&P 500 fell 0.8%. The Dow fell 0.7%, and the Nasdaq lost 0.8%. Gains for energy producers, big retailers and other companies that rely on consumer spending were outweighed by a pullback in health care and technology stocks. Goldman Sachs rallied after reporting better profits than analysts expected. Dozens of big companies will give updates this week on how much profit they earned during the spring.
As the Associated Press reported, markets have been lurching mostly lower for weeks on worries that the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world will slam the brake too hard on the economy in hopes of bringing down high inflation. If they’re too aggressive with their interest-rate hikes, they could cause a recession.
