While you were sleeping: Stocks stall as durable goods disappoint

Wall Street was mixed, while US Treasury bonds rose amid concern the pace of economic growth might ease.

A Commerce Department report showed US durable goods orders fell more than expected in May, while orders for business equipment posted a surprise decline, bolstering concern about the strength of economic growth.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note settled at 2.135%, compared with 2.146% on Friday. It was the yield’s lowest close since November 10, 2016.

"The bond market is signalling an economic slowing," Paul Nolte, portfolio manager at Kingsview Asset Management in Chicago, told Reuters.

"That's why you're seeing defensive names like utilities do well, because equity investors are buying more in line with what that bond market is saying."

Wall Street was mixed. At the close of trading in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 14.79 points to 21,409.55. However, the Nasdaq Composite Index fell 0.3% to 6247.15 and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index barely changed at 2439.07.

The Dow climbed as advances in shares of Goldman Sachs and those of Walt Disney, up 1.7% and 1.3% respectively, outweighed slides in shares of Microsoft and those of Boeing, down 0.8% and 0.7% respectively.

Record fine expected
Shares of Google parent Alphabet declined 1.2%. European Union antitrust regulators are likely to impose a record fine on Alphabet unit Google over its shopping service as soon as Tuesday, two people familiar with the matter said on Monday, according to Reuters.

The European Commission declined to comment, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, Europe's Stoxx 600 Index ended the day with a 0.4% advance from the previous close. The UK's FTSE 100 Index gained 0.3%, Germany's DAX Index also rose 0.3%, while France's CAC40 Index increased 0.6%.

Shares of Switzerland's Nestlé closed 4.3% higher in Zurich. Activist investor Dan Loeb has amassed a $US3.5 billion stake in Europe's largest company. Third Point, Loeb's hedge fund, owns about 40 million shares in Nestlé, according to an investor letter released Sunday after Bloomberg first reported the position.

"It is rare to find a business of Nestlé's quality with so many avenues for improvement," wrote Third Point, which holds a 1.3% stake and encouraged Nestlé to sell its stake in cosmetics maker L'Oreal, according to Bloomberg.

Also gaining were Italian bank stocks after the nation's government agreed to spend as much as €17 billion on further shoring up the industry.

"We see virtually no risks attached to this transaction" for Intesa Sanpaolo "but other banks can celebrate too as they have avoided the risk of having to foot a very painful bill via extraordinary installments to the Resolution Fund," Andrea Filtri, an analyst at Mediobanca, wrote in a note Monday, Bloomberg reported.

(BusinessDesk)