U.S. stocks pared their gains in late-afternoon Monday with less than an hour to go until the close, following a tweet from President Donald Trump that he would make an announcement regarding the nuclear deal with Iran on Tuesday.
Earlier, stocks had gotten a lift from energy companies which rallied in response to a rise in the price of crude oil, which delivered a boost to the energy sector.
How are the main benchmarks performing?
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.38%[1] was up 39 points, or 0.2%, to 24,303. The S&P 500 index SPX, +0.36%[2] added 7 points to 2,670, a gain of 0.3%. The Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.74%[3] rose 55 points, or 0.8%, to 7,263. All three indexes were off their session highs.
Both the S&P and the Nasdaq were set for their second straight positive session, while the Dow could post a third, including a slight gain of 0.02% on Thursday. Monday’s advance built on a sharp rally in Friday’s session, which was the largest for the Dow since April 10.
The day’s gains were broad, with seven of the 11 S&P 500 sectors higher on the day. Energy was by far the biggest gainer, up 1.6%, followed by information technology, which gained 1.1%
What’s driving markets?
President Trump tweeted the would make an announcement on a possible decertification of the Iran[4] nuclear agreement that the Obama administration had reached with the Middle Eastern country back in 2015. European leaders had urged Trump not to abandon the pact.
I will be announcing my decision on the Iran Deal tomorrow from the White House at 2:00pm.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
Trump had until Saturday to decide whether to keep the deal intact. Abandoning it would trigger a reimposition of economic sanctions on Iran, hampering oil exports from the country and cutting global supply.
Meanwhile, U.S. oil benchmark CLM8, +0.16%[6] came off its high in electronic trading[7], pulling back from its highest level since 2014[8] that it had reached earlier.
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