Major U.S. stock indexes paused on Monday as investors braced for a potential U.S. interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve later in the week, while oil prices hovered near three-month lows.
The dollar steadied against a basket of currencies .DXY after touching a two-week low.
Friday’s strong U.S. employment report solidified a view among Wall Street’s top banks that the Federal Reserve will boost interest rates when its policymakers meet this week.
With a rate hike widely expected, market watchers will be looking for signals about the pace of future increases.
“Other than the Fed on Wednesday, I don’t see anything going on to make any decisions on,” said Paul Mendelsohn, chief investment strategist at Windham Financial Services in Charlotte, Vermont.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 21.5 points, or 0.1 percent, to 20,881.48, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 0.87 points, or 0.04 percent, to 2,373.47 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 14.06 points, or 0.24 percent, to 5,875.78.
Corporate deal-making continued as chips giant Intel (INTC.O: Quote) said it would acquire driverless technology firm Mobileye (MBLY.N: Quote) for $15.3 billion. Mobileye shares jumped 28 percent.
In Europe, Amec Foster Wheeler (AMFW.L: Quote) rallied 11.6 percent after oil services company Wood Group (WG.L: Quote) agreed to buy the company for $2.7 billion.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index .STOXX gained 0.4 percent, led by increases in mining shares.
MSCI’s all-country world stock index .MIWD00000PUS rose 0.3 percent.
Aside from the Fed meeting, which starts on Tuesday, the world’s most powerful finance ministers and central bankers convene in the German town of Baden Baden starting on Friday, their first meeting since Donald Trump won the U.S. election.
Oil hovered around three-month lows as rising inventories and drilling activity in the United States offset optimism over OPEC’s efforts to restrict crude output and reduce a global glut.
U.S. crude CLc1 settled down 0.2 percent at $48.40 a barrel, and touched its lowest point since Nov 30. Brent crude LCOc1 settled down 0.04 percent at $51.35 a barrel.
The dollar edged up 0.1 percent against a basket of key world currencies, recovering after Friday’s bout of profit-taking following the robust U.S. jobs report.
“We remain bullish on the dollar, but as Friday’s events suggested, a lot of good news is already priced into the dollar at current levels,” said Shaun Osborne, chief FX strategist at Scotiabank in Toronto.
Sterling, which has been one of the worst performers against the dollar the last two weeks, rose half a percent after Scotland demanded the right to hold a new referendum on independence.
U.S. Treasury yields edged higher in anticipation of an interest rate increase on Wednesday, nervousness that the central bank could indicate a more aggressive pace of future rate hikes, and new corporate bond supply.
Prices for benchmark 10-year Treasuries US10YT=RR fell 9/32 to yield 2.615 percent, from a yield of 2.582 percent late on Friday.
The prospect of imminent interest rate rises kept spot gold XAU= near five-week lows touched last week.
Goldcorp Inc. (GG) ended last trading session with a change of 0.27 percent. It trades at an average volume of 8.91M shares versus 8.07M shares recorded at the end of last trading session. The share price of $14.86 is at a distance of 24.77 percent from its 52-week low and down -26.89 percent versus its peak. The company has a market cap of $12.74B and currently has 857M shares outstanding. The share price is currently -7.42 percent versus its SMA20, -4.76 percent versus its SMA50, and -7.24 percent versus its SMA200. The stock has a weekly performance of -0.93 percent and is 9.26 percent year-to-date as of the recent close.
Enbridge Inc. (ENB) recently recorded -0.34 percent change and currently at $41.19 is 17.29 percent away from its 52-week low and down -8.21 percent versus its peak. It has a past 5-day performance of 0.15 percent and trades at an average volume of 6.51M shares. The stock has a 1-month performance of -2.96 percent and is -1.19 percent year-to-date as of the recent close. There were about 1.62B shares outstanding which made its market cap $66.77B. The share price is currently -1.59 percent versus its SMA20, -2.58 percent versus its SMA50, and -0.82 percent versus its SMA200.