NEW YORK: Wall Street treaded water at the open on Monday as investors digested a flurry of political and corporate news, with the arrest of a Saudi royal also rattling markets.
The cautious open follows Friday’s trifecta of record closes for all three major US stock indices, with the broad-based S&P 500 posting a third consecutive all-time closing high.
About 30 minutes into the day’s trading, the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P were flat at 23,539.84 and 2,587.89, respectively. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was 0.2 percent higher at 6,775.57.
Markets were watching news out of Saudi Arabia which saw a sweeping purge of the kingdom’s highest figures over the weekend, and the arrest of royal family members including billionaire investor Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, a major shareholder in firms such as Apple, Twitter and Citigroup.
Shares in Apple were flat at the open but Twitter and Citigroup were each down 0.8 percent.
Meanwhile, US lawmakers were due to begin debate on a comprehensive tax overhaul, that proposes deep cuts to corporate income taxes at the expense of some favored individual deductions, but the outcome highly uncertain.
“The tax plan is a work in motion, which is to say one headline could mean something one day and nothing the next,” wrote Patrick O’Hare of Briefing.com.
“Remember, this is just the House GOP trying to get its side of things figured out,” he said of the proposal that already is seeing changes.
Meanwhile, Singapore-based Broadcom announced what could be the biggest deal ever in the tech sector, offering $130 billion to acquire rival chip-maker Qualcomm, or nearly 30 percent over the target’s closing price on Friday.
Shares in Qualcomm were up more than four percent while Broadcom gained 2.6 percent.
William Dudley, longtime president of the influential New York Federal Reserve Bank, announced he would step down in mid-2018, adding further uncertainty to the future makeup of the committee which sets US monetary policy.
In earnings news, CVS Health and Sysco posted better-than-expected results but were lower in early trading.
Source: Brecorder.com
