Stock market today: Wall Street drifts after French market rises following election results

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks were on the slide Monday after the French market rallied, as the election continued to cause gyrations in financial markets around the world.

The S&P 500 rose 0.3% in afternoon trading as it began a shortened four-day week that includes the July 4 holiday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 62 points, or 0.2%, as of 2:15 p.m. ET, and the Nasdaq Composite Index was up 0.8%.

Some of the world's strongest action occurred across the Atlantic, where the CAC 40 index in Paris jumped as much as 2.8% before stabilizing at a 1.1% gain. The results in France suggest that a far-right political party may fail to secure a decisive majority in the country's legislative elections. This opens the door for France to avoid a worst-case scenario for financial markets, where such a victory could give rise to policies that would significantly increase French government debt and other challenges.

This year will be a major election year around the world. Voters will head to the polls in the U.K. this week and soon elsewhere. In the U.S., pollsters are gauging the fallout from last week’s debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. All of this underscores political polarization and how elections determine the economy, rather than the other way around, according to Nick Gentle and others in Barclays’ product management group.

Trump Media & Technology Group, whose stock has seen ups and downs depending on Donald Trump's chances at the White House, rose 1.1% to $33.10. Shares of the company behind Trump's Truth Social platform, however, are still well below the level of around $70 reached earlier this year.

In the bond market, Treasury yields rose, as they did on Friday immediately after the Biden-Trump debate. Heightened prospects of a Republican victory in November have sent traders back to the moves of 2016, according to Morgan Stanley strategists. In addition to pushing rates higher, traders also invested in shares of oil and gas companies and financial companies, among other moves.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note climbed to 4.49%, up from 4.39% late Friday and 4.29% late Thursday. That represents a slight reversal of the broader trend since the spring, when the 10-year Treasury yield topped 4.70% in late April.

Yields have fallen largely on hopes that inflation will slow enough to convince the Federal Reserve to cut its key interest rate later this year from the highest level in more than two decades. High rates slow the U.S. economy by making it more expensive to borrow for a home, car or other asset.

Hopes for rate cuts rose after a report on Monday showed the U.S. manufacturing sector weakened last month more than economists expected. Perhaps more importantly for Wall Street, the Institute for Supply Management report also indicates that price increases are slowing, even as prices continue to rise. Taken together, this data could offer more evidence of easing inflation pressures that the Federal Reserve wants before cutting rates.

The highlight of this week’s economic reports will likely come Friday, when the U.S. government announces how many workers were hired in June. Economists expect overall hiring to slow to 190,000 from 272,000 in May. That would bring the number closer to what Bank of America calls the Goldilocks figure of about 150,000, to about 25,000.

At this level, the U.S. economy could continue to grow and avoid a recession without being strong enough to put upward pressure on inflation.

On Wall Street, Chewy swung from a big initial gain to a 4.1% loss after a widely followed trader, Keith Gill, revealed he owns just over 9 million shares of the pet supply company. That represents about 6.6% of the entire company, according to a filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Gill rose to fame during the initial meme-stock craze of 2021 that saw GameStop soar to market-highs. Gill, who goes by Roaring Kitty and other nicknames, became the face of fans pushing GameStop higher. Gill had recently started talking about GameStop again, which helped its stock rally. But it fell 5.6% on Monday following his revelation about Chewy.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, Spirit AeroSystems rose 3.6% after Boeing said it would buy the maker of fuselages and other aircraft parts for $4.7 billion in stock and assume about $3.6 billion of its debt.

Boeing, which rose 2.5%, faces increased scrutiny from the government and airlines that buy its planes over concerns about safety and quality. Boeing previously owned Spirit AeroSystems, and the acquisition reverses a long-standing strategy of outsourcing key tasks on its jetliners.

Meta Platforms fell 0.1% after European Union regulators accused it of violating the bloc's new rules on digital competition by forcing Facebook and Instagram users to choose between viewing ads or pay to avoid them.

In overseas stock markets, Japan's Nikkei 225 index gained 0.1 percent after a quarterly survey by the Bank of Japan called tankan showed a slight improvement in confidence among the country's biggest manufacturers between April and June.

Shanghai stocks rose 0.9% after mixed data from the world's second-largest economy.

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AP reporters Matt Ott and Zimo Zhong contributed to this report.