Stocks Trip Ahead of Fed Gathering
Updated from 2:13 p.m. EDT
Stocks in the U.S. fell Monday as buyers sat on the sidelines ahead of the upcoming meeting of
Federal Reserve
policymakers a day from now.
The
Dow Jones Industrial Average
lost 42.17 points, or 0.4%, at 11,284.15, and the
S&P 500
was off 11.30 points, or 0.9%, at 1249.01. The
Nasdaq
declined 25.40 points, or 1.1%, to 2285.56.
As is often the case, traders appeared unwilling to make big bets ahead of Tuesday's Fed meeting. While the Fed isn't expected to make any change to the overnight lending rate, investors will be anxious to learn what the central bank thinks about the state of the economy and whether another move could be near.
Earlier, the government issued a report on personal income and spending for June. Spending was up 0.6%, topping the 0.4% consensus, and income rose 0.1%, ahead of the expectation for a decline of 0.1%. The core personal consumption expenditures index was rose 0.3%, a bit warmer than had been anticipated.
The losses had been more pronounced, but a selloff in crude mitigated the pressure on stocks. Oil prices sank $3.69 to $121.41 a barrel despite word of a fire at a
Valero
TheStreet Recommends
(VLO) - Get Valero Energy Corporation Report
refinery and a large storm in the Gulf of Mexico.
On the corporate side,
Verizon
(VZ) - Get Verizon Communications Inc. Report
and two unions have extended their deadline for reaching a labor agreement, delaying a planned strike that would have affected 65,000 workers. Verizon was down 0.5%.
Motorola
(MOT)
named a former
Qualcomm
(QCOM) - Get Qualcomm Inc Report
executive as head of its mobile-device unit, a significant step in spinning off the handset division into a separate public company. Shares rose more than 11%.
Sanjay Jha, COO and President of CDMA Technologies with Qualcomm, will leave to become co-CEO of Motorola and chief of the company's mobile devices business. Motorola's current CEO, Greg Brown, will also serve as co-CEO and will head up the broadband mobility solutions division.
Among analyst actions,
Amgen
(AMGN) - Get Amgen Inc. Report
was initiated as a buy at Bank of America, while
Deere
(DE) - Get Deere & Company Report
was downgraded at Goldman Sachs to neutral from buy.
Nortel
(NT)
was cut at Jefferies to hold from buy, and Morgan Stanley lifted its price target on
Bank of America
(BAC) - Get Bank of America Corp Report
to $22 from $15.
The chip sector was in focus throughout the day after the Semiconductor Industry Association said global sales of semiconductors for the first half of the year rose to $127.5 billion, up 5.4% from the same period in 2007. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Sector index was better by 0.5%.
The
United States Oil
(USO) - Get United States Oil Fund LP Report
ETF, which tracks the price of crude, slumped 3.5%.
This article was written by a staff member of TheStreet.com.
