By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets opened mixed on Monday, losing premarket gains amid ongoing uncertainty about the latest stimulus bill to be prepared by Congress.
Expectations that the Federal Reserve will signal a shift to an even looser monetary policy stance at its meeting this week offered some support, as did a modest decline in infection rates at the weekend of some the states hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as a continued rebound in durable goods orders in June.
Despite losing a week to internal divisions, Republican Senators are also likely to present their latest stimulus proposals on Monday, according to weekend reports quoting White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Reports have suggested that the Senate will propose extending the crucial weekly checks that have supported the millions of Americans who lost their jobs since April. However, they appear not to include any money specifically for state and city governments, putting the Senate on a collision course with the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. The two chambers have little time to hammer out a compromise, but one is still likely given the reluctance of either party, only four months from the election, to be blamed for the consequences.
Even so, few seemed in the mood to add to risk positions, with Gold Futures and Silver Futures seeing the bulk of speculative flows rather than equities. Gold hit a new all-time high while silver surged to its highest level in seven years.
By 9:40 AM ET (1330 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 14 points, or less than 0.1%, at 26,456 points. The S&P 500 was up by 0.2% and the Nasdaq Composite was up by 1.1%, thanks largely to Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) gaining over 2% on the back of broker recommendations.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE:TSM) stock also gained another 10% on expectations that it will profit from Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)'s inability to start production of the latest generation of chip technology until late 2022 at the earliest. TSM's biggest business is making the chips that other firms design.
Gold mining stocks thrived in line with the price for the underlying asset. Barrick Gold (NYSE:GOLD) gained 5.4% to a seven-year high, while Newmont Goldcorp (NYSE:NEM) rose 4.0% to a new record high.
Earlier, Commerce Department data showed that durable goods orders continued to recover in June, rising another 7.3%. However, the data are little more than a warm-up act for the first reading of second-quarter gross domestic product, which is due on Thursday.