By STAN CHOE, Associated Press Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are ticking higher on Monday, ahead of a week with several data reports that could dictate by how much or even whether the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates at its next meeting in a week.
The S&P 500 rose 0.3% and was sitting just below its record set last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 11 points, or less than 0.1%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.6% higher.
AppLovin and Robinhood Markets helped lead the market after learning they will join the S&P 500 index later this month, along with Emcor Group. Many investment funds directly mimic the index or at least compare their performance against it, so a stock’s joining the list of the 500 largest companies can draw investor dollars immediately.
AppLovin climbed 10.8%, Robinhood jumped 11.9% and Emcor added 0.4%. They will replace three companies that have shrunk enough in size to get demoted to S&P’s index of small stocks, the SmallCap 600.
Those stocks, MarketAxess Holdings, Caesars Entertainment and Enphase Energy, slipped by between 0.1% and 2.3%.
EchoStar jumped 20.5% after saying it agreed to sell spectrum licenses to Elon Musk’s SpaceX for $17 billion in cash and stock. SpaceX also agreed to fund roughly $2 billion of interest payments on EchoStar debt through November 2027.
Trading across the broad market, though, was relatively quiet ahead of several updates coming later this week on the economy and inflation. They could alter expectations among traders, who at the moment are unanimously forecasting the Fed will cut its main interest rate for the first time this year at its meeting two Wednesdays from now.
Investors tend to love such cuts because they can give a boost to the economy and to prices for investments. The downside of them is that they can also push inflation higher.
So far this year, the Fed has been more worried about the potential of inflation worsening because of President Donald Trump’s tariffs than about the job market. But a slew of recent reports showing the U.S. job market is slowing may be changing minds.
On Tuesday, the U.S. government will release preliminary revisions for the job growth numbers it reported through March, and it could show that hiring was weaker than earlier thought.
Reports on inflation will follow on Wednesday and Thursday, showing how much prices rose last month at the wholesale and at the consumer levels. Bigger rises there than expected could tie the Fed’s hands. Officials would need to decide which problem is more pressing, either the job market or inflation, because they have only one tool to fix either. And helping one tends to hurt the other in the short term.
In the bond market, Treasury yields continued to ease as expectations remain high for the Fed to cut interest rates. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.05% from 4.10% late Friday and from 4.28% last Tuesday.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 1.5% for one of the larger gains after Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba announced that he plans to resign.
Analysts said Ishiba’s announcement was expected for some time and welcomed it as moving things forward, although uncertainty remains as the ruling Liberal Democratic Party will need to hold an election to choose a new leader. Ishiba will remain prime minister until his successor is chosen and approved by parliament.
Also Monday, Japan’s Cabinet Office said the economy expanded at a stronger rate in the fiscal first quarter than previously estimated, at a seasonally adjusted 2.2% annualized rate, better than the earlier 1.0% rate as solid consumer spending and inventories lifted growth more than previously thought.
AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.