Wall Street drifted higher Monday to kick off the first full week of earnings reporting season. The S&P 500 rose 13.68 points, or 0.3%, to 4,151.32 in its first trading after squeezing out its fourth winning week in the last five. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 100.71 points, or 0.3%, to 33,987.18, while the Nasdaq composite climbed 34.26 points, or 0.3%, to 12,157.72. All three swayed between small gains and losses in quiet trading before ending near their highs for the day. One of the biggest gains on Wall Street came from Prometheus Biosciences. It soared 69.7% after the biotechnology company announced over the weekend that it was being acquired by Merck for $200 per share, or about $10.8 billion.
Several financial companies delivered a mixed set of profit reports for the first three months of the year. They followed up on a bevy of better-than-expected reports from JPMorgan Chase and other big US banks that marked the unofficial start of reporting season late last week. A lot of focus has been on the strength of the financial industry broadly after the second- and third-largest US bank failures in history last month rocked markets worldwide. Charles Schwab reported better profit than expected, and its stock rose 3.9%. It flipped from an earlier loss after it said deposits fell more last quarter than expected. It also paused a stock buyback program.
M&T Bank jumped 7.8% for the biggest gain in the S&P 500 after it reported stronger profit and revenue than expected. State Street dropped 9.2% after reporting slightly weaker profit and revenue than forecast. Broadly, expectations for companies across the S&P 500 this reporting season are very low. Analysts are forecasting the sharpest drop in earnings per share for companies in the S&P 500 since the pandemic was pounding the global economy in 2020. Later this week, Bank of America, Johnson & Johnson, Tesla, and several regional banks will also report their results.
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