Stock Market Today: Dow Starts August in Red as Global Growth Fears Bite

By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com -- The Dow swung between gains and losses Monday but closed just below the flatline as fresh worries about global growth overshadowed the recent bout of better-than-expected quarterly results that propelled stocks to deliver their best monthly gain since 2020 last month.  

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.14%, or 46 points, the Nasdaq was down 0.2%, and the S&P 500 fell 0.3%.

Energy fell more than 2% to lead the broader market lower, pressured by a nearly 5% slump in oil prices after the latest data pointing to weakness in the Chinese housing market and factory activity stoked fresh recession concerns.

“Increased recession fears since the release of our Mid-year outlook have prompted substantial revisions to global growth,” Morgan Stanley said, highlighting the “lack of a bounce-back in China” as one of the key drivers.

The bank now sees global growth at 2.4%Y, 50 basis points lower than its forecast in May.

Coterra Energy Inc (NYSE:CTRA), APA Corporation (NASDAQ:APA), and Halliburton Company (NYSE:HAL) were among the worst performers in the energy sector, falling more than 3% each.

Treasury yields, meanwhile, appeared to be pricing in the increasing prospect of a recession as a key part of the yield curve – the 2-year treasury yield over 10-year Treasury yield - further inverted, a harbinger for a recession.

Against the backdrop of an ongoing inversion in the yield curve, banking stocks struggled, pushing the broader financials sector more than 1% lower.

Tech, which was at the forefront of the broader market bounce-back since mid-June following quarterly results that weren’t as bad as feared, struggled to turn positive.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) were in the red, with the latter reportedly set to kick off a four-part bond sale to strengthen its balance sheet that will support buybacks and dividends, Bloomberg reported.

Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) fell about 2% despite Greenlight Capital announcing a new stake in the social media giant betting that the latter will emerge victorious in its court battle with Elon Musk to force the billionaire to follow through on his $44 billion deal to take over the company.

Semiconductor stocks gave back some of their earlier gains as weakness in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE:TSM) and ON Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ:ON) offset strength in NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) ahead of an important week for chipmakers.

Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) is set to report quarterly results on Tuesday.

In other news, Boeing (NYSE:BA) jumped 6% on reports that the Federal Aviation Administration had approved the jet maker to restart deliveries of its 787 Dreamliner.

On the political front, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to visit Taiwan as part of her tour of Asia despite hostile threats from China.