Stocks closed slightly lower after a wobbly day of trading Monday as worries about rising interest rates and high inflation keep a lid on Wall Street despite some better-than-expected profit reports from banks. The S&P 500 fell 0.90 points, or 0.02%, to 4,391.69. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 39.54 points, or 0.1%, to 34,411.69. The Nasdaq fell 18.72 points, or 0.1%, to 13,332.36. The price of US natural gas jumped more than 7% and is close to its highest since 2008, the AP reports. The price of benchmark US oil, meanwhile, rose 1.2% to settle at $108.21 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gained 2.7% to settle at $111.70,.
Counterbalancing drops in tech stocks were rises in energy firms and some better-than-expected profit reports. Synchrony Financial jumped 6.2% after it said it earned more in the first three months of the year than Wall Street expected. It also boosted its dividend and plan to buy back its own stock. Bank of America rose 3.5% after reporting stronger profits than analysts forecast. They're among the first companies to tell investors how much they earned at the start of 2022, and expectations are relatively subdued. Analysts are forecasting roughly 5% growth for S&P 500 companies, the slowest since the end of 2020, according to FactSet.
Much of that is because it's difficult to keep growing profits at such a high pace following a year of better than 30% growth. But inflation may also be pulling down profits following a year of big companies' successfully passing along almost all their price increases onto their customers. Shares of Twitter, meanwhile, rose 7.5% in the first trading after the company announced a plan to make it more difficult for someone to take over the company. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said he wants to buy the social-media platform and take it private, but the company has made it tough for him to amass more than a 15% stake in it.
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