Investing.com – Wall Street traded lower on Monday, starting off the month and the first day of the second quarter with losses as investors parsed through mixed data.
At 11:24AM ET (15:24GMT), the Dow Jones lost 90 points, or 0.43%, the S&P 500 fell 11 points, or 0.47%, while the Nasdaq Composite traded down 24 points, or 0.40%.
In economic reports, theISM manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for March fell less than expected to 57.2, compared to expectations for a 0.7 drop to 57.0 in what was its 94th consecutive month of expansion.
February construction spending advanced just 0.8%, coming in under expectations for a 1.0% increase.
As far as appearances from members of the U.S. central bank, New York Fed chief William Dudley gave a speech that centered on student loans and didn’t deal with monetary policy.
Still ahead, Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker will speak at 3:00PM ET (19:00GMT), while Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker is due to deliver comments at 5:00PM ET (21:00GMT).
Markets continued to price in June as the meeting where the next Fed rate hike could occur with odds hovering just above the 50% threshold, according to Investing.com’s Fed Rate Monitor Tool, although investors were wary that that the central bank would hike twice this year with odds another increase for the December meeting at around only 46%.
The dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, had seen volatility throughout Monday’s session and was last up 0.11% at 100.53 by 11:25AM ET (15:25GMT).
On the company front, investors were digesting March monthly sales data from automakers which were widely returning disappointing numbers.
Shares in Ford (NYSE:F) were down around 3% after reporting a 7.2% decline in sales in the U.S., worse than forecasts for a 5.6% decrease, while shares in GM (NYSE:GM) slumped nearly 4% after reporting a 1.6% increase in its own numbers, disappointing expectations for a 5.5% rise.
On the upside, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) surged more than 5% as the company reported that first quarter sales jumped 69% to 25,000 vehicles; a record for the company run by Elon Musk.
Meanwhile, oil prices were lower in U.S. trading on Monday, pulling back from a four-week high as rising U.S. shale production continued to feed concerns about a global supply glut.
Oilfield services provider Baker Hughes said late Friday that the number of active U.S. rigs drilling for oil rose by 10 last week, the 11th weekly increase in a row.
That brought the total count to 662, the most since September 2015.
U.S. crude futures lost 0.69% to $50.25 by 11:26AM ET (15:26GMT), while Brent oil traded down 0.71% to $53.15.