Investing.com – U.S. stocks closed lower on Monday weighed by a slump in financials and healthcare as investors looked ahead to the start of earnings season.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed lower at 22,761. The S&P 500 closed 0.18% lower while the Nasdaq Composite closed at 6579.73, down 0.16%.
In what was a quiet day on the economic calendar for top-tier data, investors had little incentive to initiate large positions in U.S. stocks, opting to keep their powder dry ahead of the start of earnings season.
Banks mark the unofficial start of earnings season with JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM), Citigroup (NYSE:C), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) and Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) all slated to report this week.
“People are just a little anxious heading into the beginning of earnings season, and its an odd day with some markets closed for trading,” said Robert Pavlik, chief market strategist for Boston Private Wealth Management.
Healthcare was the biggest laggard of the session weighing on the broader market, as President Donald Trump is expected to sign an order easing health plan rules next week a senior administrator on Saturday.
On the corporate front, Shares of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) slipped nearly 4% after CEO Elon Musk said the company would delay the unveiling of its semi-truck to November 16 – three weeks later than the initial date, October 26 – as efforts are focused on the fixing the Model 3 bottleneck.
'Bulls and Bears' on Wall Street
The top Dow gainers for the session: Wal-Mart Stores Inc (NYSE:WMT) up 1.9%, DowDuPont Inc (NYSE:DWDP) up 0.6% and International Business Machines (NYSE:IBM) up 0.6%
General Mills Inc (NYSE:GIS) down 3.9%, Nike Inc (NYSE:NKE) down 1.7% and Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS) down 1.3%, were among the worst Dow performers of the session.