Wall Street ends higher; Investors are waiting for earnings, Fed signals

April 17 (Reuters) – Major US stock indexes posted modest gains on Monday, supported by financial and industrial stocks, as investors braced for a busy week of corporate earnings and comments from Federal Reserve officials that could give more insight into the path of interest rates. .

Markets are gauging the health of corporate earnings and the economy after several banks released their first-quarter reports with strong results last week.

Meanwhile, the New York Federal Reserve Bank said on Monday that its measure of manufacturing activity in New York state increased for the first time in five months in April, helping solidify the case for the US central bank to raise interest rates at its meeting next month.

“Markets are in a sense of suspense,” said Angelo Korkavas, investment strategist at Edward Jones. “We have a lot of corporate earnings ahead of us and the Fed rate decision in two weeks.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 100.71 points, or 0.3%, to 33,987.18 points. The S&P 500 (.SPX) rose 13.68 points, or 0.33%, to 4,151.32. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) rose 34.26 points, or 0.28%, to 12,157.72.

Among the S&P 500 sectors, the financials sector (.SPSY) rose 1.1%, the industrials sector (.SPLRCI) rose 0.8% while the real estate underweight group (.SPLRCR) rose 2.2%. Energy shares (.SPNY) fell 1.3 percent.

Shares of Google parent Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) fell 2.7%, weighing on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, after a report that South Korea’s Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) was considering replacing Google with Microsoft-owned Bing (MSFT). .O) as the default search engine on its devices.

Investors await more reports from major US banks this week, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) and Morgan Stanley (MS.N), after big firms including JP Morgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) unexpectedly gained from higher interest payments last week.

Other companies due to report this week include Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N), Tesla Inc (TSLA.O), and Netflix Inc (NFLX.O).

Earnings for the S&P 500 are expected to have fallen 4.8% in the first quarter from the same period a year earlier, according to Refinitiv IBES data.

“Company earnings are emerging as a big driver of what the market is likely to do in the near term, and investors want to see what these companies look like here before they bet,” said Chuck Carlson, CEO of Horizon Investment Services in Hammond. , Indiana.

Investors are also seeking to gauge expectations from CEOs in the aftermath of last month’s banking crisis, which some predict could accelerate an economic slowdown.

US Treasury yields rose on Monday, with a slew of Fed speakers later in the week. The US central bank is widely expected to raise interest rates by 25 basis points to a range of 5%-5.25% next month.

In company news, shares of State Street Corp (STT.N) fell 9.2% after the financial services provider’s quarterly earnings missed analyst estimates, hurt by a drop in fee income.

Advances outnumbered losers on the NYSE by 1.42 to 1. On the Nasdaq, a ratio of 1.61 to 1 favored the gainers.

The S&P 500 hit a new 52-week high and a new low. The Nasdaq Index posted 70 new highs and 158 new lows.

About 10 billion shares changed hands on US exchanges, compared to the daily average of 10.8 billion shares over the last 20 sessions.

Additional reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Edited by Shounak Dasgupta

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