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US open: Mixed start to the week as US-Sino tensions reappear

By Iain Gilbert

Date: Monday 10 Dec 2018

US open: Mixed start to the week as US-Sino tensions reappear

(Sharecast News) - Stocks opened mixed at the bell on Monday as investors continued to fret about trade relations between the US and China.
At 1540 GMT, the Dow Jones was 0.61% lower at 24,240.80 and the S&P 500 was trading 0.43% weaker at 2,621.66. The Nasdaq Composite was 0.15% higher at 6,979.82.

The downbeat mood came after China summoned US and Canadian ambassadors to Beijing on Monday in protest at the detention of Huawei's chief financial officer, Meng Manzhou.

Meanwhile, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said over the weekend that he considered 1 March a "hard deadline" to reach a trade deal with China.

Speaking on CBS' Face the Nation, Lighthizer said: "As far as I am concerned it is a hard deadline. When I talk to the president of the United States he is not talking about going beyond March."

"The way this is set up is that at the end of 90 days, these tariffs will be raised," he said.

Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets, said the hawkishness of the comments "has added to the negative sentiment at time when tension between the US and China is rising after the arrest of the Huawei CFO."

On the corporate front, ConocoPhillips was down 1.40% after the company said it expects to buy back $3bn of shares next year and to spend $6.1bn on capex.

Elsewhere, Tesla shares were 0.071% lower after chief executive Elon Musk appeared on '60 Minutes' defending himself and the company against what he referred to as "relentless criticism".

GoPro shares slipped 0.2% after it announced it would move its international production facilities out of China to avoid tariffs.

The Dow was dragged down by a 2.33% drop in Apple shares after a Chinese court ordered the company to stop selling older iPhone models in the country after finding it had infringed on two patents held by Qualcomm. Qualcomm was 3.27% higher.

On the data front, job openings rose to 7.08m in October from the 6.96m recorded a month earlier, according to the Labor Department.

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