Stocks Are Little Changed As Wall Street Looks to Cap off a Winning Month

Stocks were little changed Monday as Wall Street braced for a busy earnings week and looked to finish up July on a positive note.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average hovered around the flatline, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite rose marginally.

Stocks have rallied this month, with the S&P 500 up 3% and on pace for its fifth positive month in a row for the first time since its seven-month streak ending August 2021. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite has gained 3.9% month to date, also on track for its fifth straight winning month.

The blue-chip Dow has jumped 3.1% in July. Last week, the index posted a 13-day advance that matched its longest streak of gains going back to 1987.

Investors have grown increasingly more hopeful about the prospects of a soft landing scenario in recent weeks, as economic data shows ongoing strength in the labor market and cooling inflation, and second-quarter earnings come in better than expected.

“We anticipated firms would exceed the low bar,” said Goldman Sachs’ David Kostin in a Sunday note. “So far 55% of reporting firms have beaten consensus estimates, above the historical average, and the aggregate year/year EPS decline of 7% is tracking 200 [basis points] better than feared.”

Last week, the Fed hiked rates to their highest level in more than 22 years after passing a much-anticipated quarter-point hike. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank will make data-driven decisions on a “meeting-by-meeting” basis.

Along with earnings from names like Amazon, Apple, CVS Health and Starbucks, investors will shift their focus to Friday’s big jobs report. Economists polled by Dow Jones expect the U.S. economy to have added 200,000 jobs in July. Nonfarm payrolls increased 209,000 in June.