By Yasin Ebrahim
Investing.com – The Dow lost steam into the close Monday, as rising Covid-19 cases and data showing a slowdown in manufacturing activity weighed on sentiment.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.3%, or 97 points, though had hit an intraday record of 35,192.11. The S&P 500 closed down 0.2%, and the Nasdaq was up 0.1%.
Materials were the biggest drag on the broader market, weighed down by a 3% decline in Mosaic Co (NYSE:MOS), while industrials were pressured by falling airline stocks as rising Covid-19 cases threatened the recovery in travel.
American Airlines (NASDAQ:AAL), Southwest Airlines (NYSE:LUV), Alaska Air (NYSE:ALK) ended in the red, with the latter down more than 2%.
"COVID-19 cases have increased over 300% nationally from June 19 to July 23, 2021, along with parallel increases in hospitalizations and deaths driven by the highly transmissible B.1.617.2 (Delta) variant," the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a Health Alert Network advisory last week.
General Electric (NYSE:GE) was also big drag on industrials after its shares began trading Monday at a previously announced reverse split-adjusted price of $103.60.
Still the outlook for industrials and other cyclical stocks remain positive.
“Given our expectation for limited fallout, we maintain our favorable view of industrials, materials, and other economically sensitive equity sectors,” Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) said.
The broader technology sector was helped by a climb in iShares Semiconductor ETF (NASDAQ:chipstocks) following a 14% surge in ON Semiconductor (NASDAQ:ON).
ON Semiconductor (NASDAQ:ON) delivered a better-than-expected outlook after reporting quarterly results that topped Wall Street estimates despite the ongoing supply chain constraints.
Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM), meanwhile, pared some gains after Google unveiled plans to build its own smartphone processor, Google Tensor, and ditch chips from Qualcomm for its slate of Pixel 6 phones to be launched later this fall.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), and Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) ended mixed.
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) was up more than 3% after cutting the price of its Model 3 standard range version in China by 15,000 Chinese yuan.
On the economic front, U.S. manufacturing activity slowed in July for the second straight month to a reading of 59.5 from 60.6 in May.
In other news, Square (NYSE:SQ) agreed to acquire Australian pay later provider Afterpay in a $29 billion all-stock transaction.