Stocks up slightly with bond yields up; economy, rates in focus

By Sinéad Carew and Amanda Cooper

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) -MSCI's global equity index was up slightly on Monday and U.S. Treasury yields climbed with the dollar after data released at the start of a short trading week showed deterioration in U.S. consumer confidence mixed with a rise in capital goods orders.

The Conference Board said its U.S. consumer confidence index unexpectedly weakened in December to 104.7 versus economist expectations for an increase to 113.3 and November's upwardly revised 112.8 on concerns about future business conditions.

New orders for key U.S.-manufactured capital goods rose in November amid strong demand for machinery but orders for durable goods, items ranging from toasters to aircraft, dropped 1.1% after increasing 0.8% in October, with declines mostly reflecting weakness in commercial aircraft orders.

Ahead of Tuesday's shorter trading day and the market's close for Christmas on Wednesday, Tim Ghriskey, senior portfolio strategist at Ingalls & Snyder said investors still had Wednesday's steep sell-off on their minds after the Federal Reserve's signal for fewer rate cuts in 2025.

"There's concern about the economy. There's concern about the Fed making a wrong move and there's the great unknown of what Trump is actually going to do," said Ghriskey, looking ahead to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration.

While Wall Street indexes are up for the year-to-date, the S&P 500 fell almost 2% last week and the Nasdaq lost 1.8%.

On Monday at 11:29 a.m, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 200.20 points, or 0.47%, to 42,640.06, the S&P 500 rose 1.39 points, or 0.03%, to 5,932.34 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 75.36 points, or 0.39%, to 19,647.96.

MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe rose 1.17 points, or 0.14%, to 845.40 while Europe's STOXX 600 index rose 0.07%.

In U.S. Treasuries, yields rose before the sale on Monday of $69 billion in two-year Treasury notes, with volumes expected to be muted this week while many traders are away before Wednesday’s Christmas holiday.

The yield on benchmark U.S. 10-year notes rose 4.2 basis points to 4.566%, from 4.524% late on Friday while the 30-year bond yield rose 4.2 basis points to 4.7578%.

The 2-year note yield, which typically moves in step with expectations for the Fed's interest rate policy, rose 3.5 basis points to 4.347%, from 4.312% late on Friday.

In currencies, the dollar advanced after a drop in the prior session while the euro fell as market moves were being dictated by recent global central bank meetings that set expectations for diverging rate cut paths next year.

The dollar index , which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies including the yen and the euro,

rose 0.37% to 108.19.

The euro was down 0.31% at $1.0397 while against the Japanese yen, the dollar strengthened 0.49% to

157.17. Sterling weakened 0.43% to $1.2515.

Oil prices extended last week's losses as a lower-than-expected U.S. inflation reading last week offset concern about a supply surplus next year.[O/R]

U.S. crude fell 1.02% to $68.75 a barrel and Brent fell to $72.11 per barrel, down 1.14% on the day.



Gold prices edged lower in a subdued holiday-season trading, weighed down by a robust dollar and high U.S. Treasury yields.

Spot gold fell 0.34% to $2,611.99 an ounce. U.S. gold futures fell 0.49% to $2,615.70 an ounce.

Source: Investing.com