Stock market today: Wall Street rises following last week’s slide

AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Most U.S. stocks ticked higher Monday to recover some of their sharp slide from last week.

The S&P 500 rose 0.4% for its first gain in three days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 55 points, or 0.1%, and the Nasdaq composite gained 0.6%.

CVS Health rallied 5.4% after adding four new directors to its board. The health giant did so following discussions with a major investor, hedge-fund owner Glenview Capital Management. Its CEO, Larry Robbins, is one of the new directors.

Liberty Energy also helped pull the market upward after rising 4.9%. President-elect Donald Trump named its CEO, Chris Wright, as his Secretary of Energy.

Trading of Spirit Airlines’ stock, meanwhile, was halted after the budget carrier reached an agreement with its debtholders on a plan to take it through Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The airline will continue to fly while it restructures, but it will also likely wipe out the holdings of all its current stock investors.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 23.00 points to 5,893.62. The Dow fell 55.39 to 43,389.60, and the Nasdaq composite rose 111.69 to 18,791.81.

Stocks regained some momentum after giving back more than half their postelection gains at the end of last week. Investors had sent the S&P 500 nearly 4% higher in the days immediately following Trump’s presidential win. Bank stocks, smaller companies and other areas of the market seen as the biggest winners from Trump’s preference for lower tax rates, higher tariffs and lighter regulation did particularly well.

More recently, though, investors have braced for some of the potential downsides for the market of Trump’s reshaping of the economy. Moderna rose 7.2% on Monday but is still down since word came out that Trump wants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine activist, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

Worries about potentially higher inflation under Trump have also sent Treasury yields upward in the bond market. That could tie the Federal Reserve’s hands, when the central bank is trying to lower interest rates to ease the brakes off the economy and keep the job market humming.

While lower rates can give a boost to growth, they can also add fuel for inflation.

“Traders appear to be gauging the potential impact of a new Trump administration’s policies on the economy, and the possibility that the Fed may slow down its rate-cutting campaign,” according to Chris Larkin, managing director, trading and investing, at E-Trade from Morgan Stanley.

Higher rates and yields in turn mean more pressure on companies to deliver bigger profits in order to make their stock prices look less expensive. Their stock prices have already run up much faster than their earnings.

Several big-name companies will be reporting their latest quarterly results this week, including market heavyweight Nvidia on Wednesday.

The chip company has grown into one of Wall Street’s most influential, with a total market value of nearly $3.5 trillion, after becoming the poster child of the rush into artificial-intelligence technology. It will need to hit analysts’ high expectations for growth during the latest quarter to justify its big stock price, which has surged 183% this year.

Other big companies set to report this week include Lowe’s and Walmart on Tuesday, Target on Wednesday and Deere on Thursday.

The big-box retailers will be reporting after an update on Friday said shoppers spent more at U.S. retailers generally last month than expected. It’s the latest signal that the most influential force on the economy remains solid, but the data may not be quite as strong as it appeared. After taking away purchases of automobiles, sales at retailers were weaker last month than economists expected.

In the bond market, Treasury yields edged lower, which helped keep things calmer in the stock market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.41% from 4.45% late Friday.

In stock markets abroad, indexes ended mixed in Europe following sharper swings in Asia.

South Korea’s Kospi jumped 2.2% after Samsung Electronics, the country’s biggest company, announced a stock buyback plan.

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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.