Here are the most important news items that investors need to start their trading day:
1. July heat
All three major U.S. stock indices are poised to close higher for July as the month wraps up Monday. For the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, it would mark their fifth consecutive months of gains. The Dow, meanwhile, rode a 13-day winning streak, its longest since 1987, for much of July. This week will test whether the momentum continues. There's a big new batch of corporate earnings due, and the jobs report for July is due Friday. Follow live market updates.
2. Earnings season marches on
This week brings another busy slate of quarterly earnings reports, from tech giants to restaurant stocks. Apple and Amazon are the biggest names due up, along with Starbucks and CVS Health. Earnings this season have so far defied expectations and have been somewhat stronger than expected. Here are the big names on deck:
- Tuesday: Uber, Merck, Pfizer (before the bell); Starbucks, Advanced Micro Devices (after the bell)
- Wednesday: CVS Health, Yum Brands (before the bell); Qualcomm (after the bell)
- Thursday: Moderna, Warner Bros. Discovery (before the bell); Amazon, Apple (after the bell)
3. Trucking giant shutting down
Yellow, the trucking company formerly known as YRC Worldwide, is shutting down and filing for bankruptcy protection over its failure to restructure more than $1 billion in debt. A huge chunk of that debt comes from a $700 million pandemic relief loan from the Trump administration, a deal that gave the U.S. Treasury with a 30% stake in the company. Its shares have cratered to under $1 apiece. Yellow, which boasted of customers such as Walmart and Home Depot, employs 22,000 people who are represented by the Teamsters union.
4. Fee fight
Lawmakers on both side of the aisle are pushing for a vote on the Credit Card Competition Act, which aims to clamp down on fees by opening up payment network options beyond Visa and Mastercard. This has pitted retailers like Walmart and Amazon, which support the bill, against payment and credit card companies, such as Capital One and the aforementioned Visa and Mastercard. It's not clear whether a vote will happen this year, before the 2024 election campaign begins in earnest. But support has grown for it since last year. "It's time to inject real competition into the credit card network market, which is dominated by the Visa-Mastercard duopoly," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a co-sponsor of the bill.
5. Bringing the war to Russia
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over the weekend said the war "is returning to Russia's territory" in remarks that came as Russian officials claimed that Ukrainian drones attacked Moscow. There was minor damage and no one was injured. Zelenskyy also said warfare in Russia is part of an "inevitable natural and fair process." Ukraine, meanwhile, is pushing forward with its much-hyped counteroffensive, only it appears to have gotten off to a slower start than expected. Follow war updates.
– CNBC's Yun Li, Cait Freda, Kristina Partsinevelos and Hannah Ward-Glenton contributed to this report.
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