Yuri Kageyama And Matt Ott, The Associated Press
12 minutes ago
FILE – A person looks at an electronic stock price board displaying Japan’s Nikkei average stock price at a securities firm in Tokyo, May 27, 2024. Asian stocks were mostly lower after mixed trading on Wall Street after a three-day holiday weekend, Wednesday, May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)
Wall Street is expected to open lower on Wednesday as a few big trades and a handful of earnings reports fill the news void until the latest inflation report on Friday.
Futures for the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average were each down 0.6% before the close.
ConocoPhillips announced it would acquire Marathon Oil Co. in a stock-for-stock transaction for a total purchase price of about $17.1 billion, or $22.5 billion including debt. Marathon shares rose more than 7%. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter, but is subject to approval by Marathon shareholders.
Global pharmaceutical giant Merck will acquire privately held ophthalmic biotechnology company iBio for up to $3 billion, iBio’s lead investor Jeit Capital said. Merck shares were flat in premarket trading.
American Airlines fell 8.6% before the close after it cut its profit outlook and said its chief commercial officer, Vas Raja, would leave the company in June.
Dick’s Sporting Goods rose 7.2% after the company reported profits that beat analysts’ expectations and raised its full-year profit outlook, while pet food and supplies maker Chewy also handily beat Wall Street’s first-quarter profit targets, sending its shares up nearly 6%.
There’s little economic news to move markets until Friday, when the government releases its latest monthly report on household spending and income. The consumer spending report also contains the Federal Reserve’s preferred calculation of April’s inflation rate.
The Federal Reserve has kept the federal funds rate at its highest level in more than 20 years in the hopes of keeping the economy and investment prices in check and lowering annual inflation to its 2% target. Leaving interest rates high for a long period of time could hurt the job market and the broader economy. But cutting interest rates prematurely could allow inflation to accelerate again, causing further pain to American households.
Meanwhile in Europe, as of midday, France’s CAC 40 was down 1.1%, Britain’s FTSE was down 0.4% and Germany’s DAX was down 0.8%.
In Asian markets, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei stock average fell 0.8% to 38,556.87. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 1.3% to 7,665.60. South Korea’s KOSPI lost 1.7% to 2,677.30. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell 1.8% to 18,477.01 while the Shanghai Composite Index was little changed, up less than 0.1% to 3,111.02.
The International Monetary Fund raised its economic outlook for China, the world’s second-largest economy, saying it now sees annualized growth of 5 percent this year, but warned that consumer-friendly reforms were needed to sustain strong, high-quality growth.
In other trading, benchmark U.S. crude rose 61 cents to $80.44 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while the international standard Brent crude added 57 cents to $84.51 a barrel.
In currency trading, the U.S. dollar rose to 157.28 yen from 157.12 yen, while the euro fell to 1.0848 dollars from 1.0857 dollars.
On Tuesday, the S&P 500 closed little changed, just below the record high it hit a week ago. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.6%, while gains in tech stocks helped the Nasdaq Composite Index rise 0.6%, hitting a new all-time high.
