Monday's Stock Market Close: Boeing Bright Spot In Mixed Day On Wall Street

Stocks ended the day mixed Monday, pressured by violence in Hong Kong and worries over the China trade deal and impeachment news.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which started the day with a 160-point plunge, was little changed at the close, gaining 10 points to 27,691. The S&P 500 lost 6 points to 3,087 and the Nasdaq Composite gave up 11 points to 8,464.

Volume on the New York Stock Exchange was light for the Veterans’ Day holiday, totaling just under 2.3 billion shares with 1,264 issues advancing, 90 setting new highs, and 1,697 issues declining, with 52 setting new lows.

Itau Unibanco Holding (ITUB), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nokia (NOK) led the most actives.

Boeing (BA) gained 4.5% after announcing it expected its Boeing 737 MAX to be ungrounded by the end of the year and returned to commercial service by January. The plane was taken out of service after two fatal crashes that killed more than 300 people because the planes’ automatic stabilization system malfunctioned.

Alababa (BABA) lost 0.21% despite spectacular Singles Day sales totaling more than $38 billion. The platform this year included B2B sites in addition to the usual consumer sites. Singles day is a shopping holiday popular with young Chinese celebrating their single status.

Hong Kong police shot a protester in the abdomen at point-blank range and a man was doused with gasoline and set afire as anti-government protests paralyzed downtown and hobbled transport networks.

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam condemned protesters and warned the government will not yield to their demands if the violence continues.

Traders were weighing the odds of a resolution to the trade war with China after President Trump on Friday indicated he was cool to any agreement. Trump said no agreement on tariff reductions had been reached and, in any case, there’s no chance tariffs would be eliminated entirely.

Democrats planned to open the public phase of the impeach inquiry Wednesday with testimony from two diplomats at the center of the controversy over whether Trump tried to pressure Ukraine into investigating his political rivals in exchange for military aid. The president started the morning by railing against the investigation, saying transcripts released last week were “doctored.”

In a “60 Minutes” interview aired Sunday, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon called income inequality a huge problem but refused to say executive pay should be cut. Dimon expressed optimism about the economy continuing its unprecedented expansion and said the current situation is just a slowdown, not a prelude to a recession. Trump praised Dimon for saying in the interview that the tariffs brought China to the table.

Global markets were mainly lower.

In Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 2.62% while Japan’s Nikkei 225 was off 0.26% and China’s Shanghai Composite lost 1.83%. Australia’s S&P/ASX gained 0.72%.

In Europe, London’s FTSE 100 closed off gained 0.42% and the German DAX lost 0.23%. The French CAC 40 gained 0.07% while the Stoxx Europe 600 was off 0.02%.

On currency markets, the British pound was up 0.4% at $1.2852 while the euro gained 0.14% to $1.1034. The U.S. dollar index was off 0.15%.

Oil futures were mixed. Crude oil lost 0.66% to $56.86 a barrel. Brent crude gained 0.02% to $62.19 a barrel. Gold futur4es lost 0.46% to $1,456.10 an ounce while and silver futures gained 0.1% to $16.82 an ounce.

Bond markets were closed.