By Stan Choe AP Business Reporter
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are falling Tuesday ahead of a report that may show whether the job market is cooling as much as Wall Street hopes, while oil prices are continuing to rise and are near their highest levels since April.
The S&P 500 was down 0.1% at the open of trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 17 points, or less than 0.1%, as of 9:40 a.m. ET, and the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.1%.
Losses among big, influential stocks weighed on the market. Nvidia, which has become a poster child for a rapid move into artificial intelligence technology, fell 1.6%, the biggest drag on the S&P 500. Eli Lilly fell 2.9%.
Those helped offset a 4.5% increase at Tesla, which reported a slower decline in sales from April to June than analysts had expected.
In the bond market, Treasury yields are falling ahead of the morning release of a report that will show how many jobs U.S. companies had posted at the end of May. Wall Street is hoping the job market will slow enough to keep inflation in check, but not so much that it causes so many people to lose their jobs that it could trigger a recession.
The goal is for inflation and the overall economy to slow enough to convince the Fed to cut interest rates, and rising expectations of just that have sent Treasury yields mostly lower since April.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 4.41% from Monday’s close of 4.46%.
But the steady decline in Treasury yields since April has met resistance over the past two days. Last week’s debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump prompted traders to make moves in anticipation of a possible Republican sweep in November. That included a rise in Treasury yields, driven in part by the possibility that the Trump administration would pursue policies that would further increase the U.S. government’s debt.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note is still well above the 4.29% level late Thursday before the debate.
In commodity markets, the price of a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude oil rose 0.4% to $83.70 after hitting its highest since April, while the international standard Brent crude rose 0.6% to $87.16 a barrel.
Oil prices are rising on hopes of stronger summer demand and the possibility of a hurricane damaging oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricane Beryl is forecast to move faster than expected and approach Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.
Overseas stock markets saw European indexes fall after reports that European inflation slowed but remained above the European Central Bank’s expectations. Germany’s DAX index fell 1.1% and France’s CAC 40 index fell 0.5%.
French stocks had risen a day earlier after election results suggested the far-right parties would fail to win a majority in the country’s parliament, increasing the chances of government gridlock and avoiding a worst-case scenario in which a far-right majority would push through policies that would dramatically increase France’s debt.
This is a crucial year for elections around the world, with voters in the UK heading to the polls later this week.
In Asia, the Nikkei rose 1.1 percent after the Japanese yen fell again to near its lowest level in 38 years, potentially boosting profits for Japanese exporters.
