U.S. Stocks Look Headed For Flat Close

(RTTNews) - U.S. stocks look headed for a flat close on Monday with investors largely making cautious moves as they await earnings updates from banks and economic data, for more clarity about the state of the nation's economy.

The major averages are all down in negative territory, though with marginal losses.

The Dow is at 33,876.35, down 10.12 points or about 0.03 percent. The S&P 500 is down 5.19 points or 0.13 percent at 4,132.47, while the Nasdaq is lower by 23.32 points or 0.19 percent at 12,100.14.

Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley are scheduled to announce their quarterly earnings during the course of this week.

Results are also due from Netflix, J&J and Tesla this week.

Alphabet shares are down 4 percent on reports Samsung is considering replacing Google with Microsoft's Bing as the default search engine on its devices.

Shares of Charles Schwab are up sharply on strong results.

Prometheus Biosciences is soaring nearly 70 percent, buoyed by Merck's plans to buy the company for approximately $10.8 billion.

Concerns about a potential recession later this year, and uncertainty about interest rates are weighing on sentiment.

The President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Thomas Barkin said today that he wants to see more evidence of inflation settling back to target.

Barkin also said that he feels reassured by what he is seeing in the banking sector.

In overseas trading, Asian markets ended mostly higher amid optimism about Chinese economic growth. European stocks failed to hold early gains and ended mixed as traders looked for direction.