Stocks close lower on Wall Street ahead of earnings reports

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

Stocks are edging lower on Wall Street in afternoon trading Monday as investors look ahead to the latest round of corporate earnings reports and a busy week of inflation updates.

The S&P 500 fell 0.5% as of 3:35 p.m. Eastern. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was essentially flat after wavering between small gains and losses, and the Nasdaq fell 0.8%. U.S. bond trading was closed.

Major indexes are coming off a volatile week where they notched out gains because of an early two-day rally that shielded stocks from several weak days.

Technology stocks were the biggest weights on the market. Makers of semiconductors and chip manufacturing equipment also suffered heavy selling after the U.S. government tightened export controls to limit China’s ability to get advanced computing chips, develop and maintain supercomputers, and make advanced semiconductors. Nvidia fell 3.2%.

Energy stocks fell as the price of U.S. crude oil dropped 1.6%. Occidental Petroleum slid 5.6%.

Industrial companies and others considered less risky, such as household goods makers, held up better than the rest of the market.

Wall Street has been turbulent amid worries about stubbornly hot inflation and the Federal Reserve’s plan to tame high prices by raising interest rates. The goal is to slow economic growth and cool both borrowing and spending in order to get inflation under control, but the plan risks sending the economy into a recession.

Investors will potentially get a more detailed picture of the Fed’s thinking on Wednesday when the central bank releases minutes from its latest policy meeting. That’s when the Fed made another extra-big interest rate increase of three-quarters of a percentage point.

“Nobody’s arguing about whether inflation is falling, its simply the slope of the slide,” said David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Funds. “The inflation battle is being won and the problem is the recession battle may be getting lost unnecessarily.”

Wall Street will also get important updates on inflation and more insight into how that is impacting retail sales.

The government on Wednesday will release its report on producer prices, which will provide details for inflation on the wholesale level for businesses. The closely watched report on consumer prices will be released on Thursday and a report on retail sales will be released on Friday.

The latest sales update could confirm that consumers are increasingly stretched financially, or at least pulling back on spending. That could send a signal to the Fed, Kelly said.

“I’m just hoping the Fed is watching these indicators,” he said. “It should tell them they’re much closer to both beating inflation and killing the economy than they think they are.”

A busy week of closely watched economic reports comes amid the opening to the latest round of corporate earnings reports. Those reports, and statements from companies and corporate executives, could help provide a clearer picture of how high prices are impacting revenue and profits and the expectations for the rest of the year and even into 2023.

PepsiCo, Delta Air Lines and Walgreens are among the big companies reporting earnings this week. Several major banks will report their results on Friday, including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup.

Inflation and recession risks remain at the top of the list for big concerns, but COVID-19 and its potential to worsen already slowing economic growth continues to linger. Stocks fell in Hong Kong and Shanghai on news of more lockdowns in China due to rising COVID-19 cases. Markets in Tokyo were closed for a holiday.

Casino and resort operators with operations in China slumped over worries about the impact from more lockdowns. Wynn Resorts fell 11.8% for the biggest decline among S&P 500 companies and Las Vegas Sands slid 7.2%

Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.