Yahoo Finance Stocks - Wall Street Slides Despite M&A Heating Up
Investing.com - Stocks started lower Monday, with investors hesitant as a new batch of tariffs between the U.S. and China went into effect. But a wave of mergers produced a lot of activity in individual issues.
The Dow fell 44.21, or 0.17%, to 26,699.29, while the broader S&P 500 index lost 9.27, or 0.32%, to 2,920.38. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite was down 64.55, or 0.81%, to 7,922.40.
U.S. tariffs of 10% on $200 billion of Chinese goods went into effect today, as did Beijing tariffs of 5% to 10% on $60 billion of U.S. goods.
There could also be increased volatility today as Standard & Poor’s gets set to debut a new sector that will feature some major names. The S&P communications services sector will bolster the current telecom sector, with names like Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) joining AT&T (NYSE:T) and Verizon (NYSE:VZ).
That will reduce the weighting of the tech sector, which retains Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), and the consumer discretionary sector, which keeps Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN).
In M&A news, satellite broadcaster Sirius XM (NASDAQ:SIRI) is buying music streaming site Pandora (NYSE:P) for $3.5 billion in stocks. Pandora jumped 7%, while Sirius slipped about 3.4%.
Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) stock slipped 5.3% after the company outbid Fox on Saturday for a majority stake in European broadcaster Sky.
And Barrick Gold (NYSE:ABX) bought Randgold (LON:RRS) Resources for $18 billion. Shares of Barrick climbed 5.6%.
In Europe, stocks were lower. Germany’s DAX fell 66.51 points, or 0.54%, while in France the CAC 40 decreased 20.03 points, or 0.36%, and in London, the FTSE 100 was down 20.98 points, or 0.28%. Meanwhile the pan-European Euro Stoxx 50 lost 16.35 points, or 0.48%, while Spain’s IBEX 35 slumped 29.40 points, or 0.31%.
In commodities, gold futures rose 0.37% to $1,205.80 a troy ounce, while crude oil futures increased 2.01% to $72.22 a barrel. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, fell 0.3% to 93.94.
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