Stock market today: Wall Street leans toward losses early Monday as markets await more earnings

Wall Street tipped toward losses before the open on Monday as markets gird for another busy week of corporate earnings reports.

Futures for the S&P 500 fell 0.4% before the bell, while futures for the Dow Jones industrials ticked down 0.2%.

Boeing rose 3.1% after the troubled aerospace giant offered the union representing striking machinists a new contract proposal over the weekend. The proposed deal would provide bigger pay raises and bonuses in a bid to end a costly walkout that has crippled production of airplanes for more than a month. The union plans to hold a ratification vote on Wednesday, the same day Boeing reports its third-quarter earnings.

Kenvue, the consumer health brands company that Johnson & Johnson spun off last year, climbed 8.2% on a Wall Street Journal report that activist investor Starboard Value had taken a significant stake in the maker of Band-Aids and Tylenol. Before Monday’s premarket rally, Kenvue shares had lost about a fifth of their value since the company started trading publicly in May of 2023.

Companies reporting earnings later this week include General Motors, Tesla, Coca-Cola, and Southwest and American airlines.

In Asia, shares were mixed on Monday, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng sinking 1.5% to 20,869.39, while the Shanghai Composite gained 0.2% to 3,268.11. The A-share index of the smaller market in Shenzhen picked up 1.6%.

China cut its one-year and five-year Loan Prime Rates, which are reference rates for lending. Lower rates can help reduce pressure on borrowers, particulary property developers that have suffered following a crackdown on excessive borrowing several years ago. But any impact on market sentiment appeared to be short-lived.

Given that the main constrain is weak demand, the “heavy lifting” will have to come from government spending, Zichun Huang of Capital Economics said in a report. China’s Finance Ministry has pledged to ramp up such outlays in coming months, “However, we are still skeptical that fiscal easing will be large enough to deliver anything more than a modest and short-lived pick-up in activity.”

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index edged 0.1% lower to 38,954.60, while the Kospi in Seoul advanced 0.4% to 2,604.92. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 closed 0.7% higher at 8,344.40.

In Europe at midday, France’s CAC 40 tumbled 1% and Germany’s DAX was down 0.9%. Britain’s FTSE 100 lost 0.2%.

Oil prices climbed after tumbling last week as worries receded that Israel will attack Iranian oil facilities as part of its retaliation for Iran’s missile attack early this month. Iran is a major producer of crude, and a strike could upend its exports to China and elsewhere. Concerns about the strength of demand from China have also hit oil prices.

Early Monday, U.S. benchmark crude was up $1.48 at $70.17 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard, picked up $1.33 to $74.39 per barrel.

The dollar rose to 149.91 Japanese yen from 149.57 yen late Friday. The yen has weakened recently on expectations that the pace of interest rate hikes by the Bank of Japan may be slower than earlier thought.

The euro slipped to $1.0852 from $1.0866 late Friday.