Monday's Stock Market Open: US Equities Lower on Light End-Of-Year Trading

U.S. stocks traded lower on Monday at noon as investors took profits from December's big rally on the next to last trading day of the year.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 132.53 points to 28,512.73 while the S&P 500 fell 14.51 points to 3,225.51 and the Nasdaq Composite Index tumbled 53.72 points to 8952.90.

“Investors probably shouldn’t read too much into the price action owing to the fact markets are in the midst of a liquidity, attendance, and news desert during these final few days of the year,” Adam Crisafulli, founder of Vital Knowledge, said in a note Monday.

The South China Morning Post reported China’s top trade negotiator, Vice Premier Liu He, will visit Washington this week to sign the phase one trade deal with the U.S.

Pending home sales rose by 1.2% in November, according to the National Association of Realtors. Economists had expected pending sales to climb by 1.1%.

The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago business survey showed activity is gradually improving. In December, the Chicago Business Barometer advanced by 2.6 points to 48.8, a four-month high. However, business sentiment however slipped by 1.2 points to 46.2 in the fourth quarter, the lowest quarterly level since the second quarter of 2009.

The U.S. trade deficit narrowed to $63.19 billion in November versus expectations of a deficit of $68.75 billion.

"Exports of goods for November were $136.4 billion, $0.9 billion more than October exports," the U.S. Census Bureau said in an accompanying report. "Imports of goods for November were $199.6 billion, $2.7 billion less than October imports."

Also, wholesale inventories remained unchanged in November.

“The best-performing [fourth quarter] sectors are leading to the downside today, and that implies some short-term selling and people positioning before year-end,” said Tom Essaye, founder of the Sevens Report. “The market was very overbought at the end of last week. Nothing really new has occurred to push the market up in the year-end.”

Tesla (TSLA) unveiled the first cars made in the company's gigafactory near Shanghai, China. Vehicles made in the plant will be sold domestically.

Marc Benioff, founder and co-CEO of Salesforce.com (CRM) called for the regulation of Facebook (FB).

“Facebook is the new cigarettes for our society,” Benioff told CNN on Sunday. “It’s something that badly needs to be regulated. They’re certainly not exactly about truth in advertising. Even they have said that. That’s why we’re really in squarely a crisis of trust, when the core vendor themselves cannot say that trust is our most important value.”

Benioff added: “I expect a fundamental reconceptualization of what Facebook’s role is in the world. When you have an entity that large with that much potential impact, and not fundamentally doing good things to improve the state of the world, well, then I think everyone is going to have it in its crosshairs.”

Overnight in Asia, markets closed mixed. Japan’s Nikkei-225 dropped 0.76%, China’s Shanghai Composite surged 1.16%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.33%.

In Europe markets finished lower, with Britain’s FTSE-100 down 0.76%, Germany’s DAX fell 0.66% and France’s CAC-40 dropped 0.91%.

Crude oil futures fell 0.18% at $61.61 per barrel and Brent crude slipped 0.34% at $66.64. Gold futures edged up 0.02%.

The euro gained 0.37% at $1.1217 while the pound sterling rose 0.51% at $1.347.