Stocks waver ahead of midterms, CPI report

U.S. stocks were mixed Monday as investors geared up for another week of potentially market-moving events: the Nov. 8 midterm elections and October consumer price data.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) advanced 0.1%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) gained 160 points, or roughly 0.5%. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) lost steam after opening higher, extending losses to slip 0.2% after the index posted its worst weekly decline since January.

A batch of downbeat corporate news has renewed focus on the wreck across technology stocks after disappointing earnings last week dragged the sector’s heaviest hitters — Apple (AAPL), Amazon.com (AMZN), and Alphabet (GOOGL) — to losses of more than 10% each.

Apple (AAPL) shares slumped more than 1% after the company said in a statement Sunday it expects fewer shipments of its newest premium iPhones than previously anticipated, citing COVID lockdowns in China that dented operations at its biggest smartphone maker Foxconn’s factory.

Also among tech giants, Facebook parent Meta (META), which was down 73% year-to-date as of Friday’s close and is the worst performer in the S&P 500 index this year, is now expected to begin large-scale layoffs this week, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. Shares rose nearly 6%.

Elsewhere in markets, Carvana shares sank 15% to a five-year low after an analyst at Morgan Stanley last week said the car retailer could be worth as little as $1.