The Dow and S&P 500 fell on Monday as US companies prepared to kick off a quarterly earnings season expected to be rough due to the coronavirus pandemic, while Amazon.com gains helped the Nasdaq end higher.
Stocks pared losses late in the day, with the Nasdaq registering its first three-day streak of gains since Feb. 12. Amazon.com gave the index its biggest boost, gaining 6.2% as the retail giant said it would hire 75,000 more people amid a surge in demand for online orders.
The S&P banking subsector fell 4.1%, with JPMorgan Chase & Co and Wells Fargo & Co set to report on Tuesday and analysts expecting a bleak outlook for the year.
Volume was lighter than usual with European and other markets still closed following Easter Sunday, but investors are also bracing for earnings news from companies, said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 328.6 points, or 1.39%, to 23,390.77, the S&P 500 lost 28.19 points, or 1.01%, to 2,761.63 and the Nasdaq Composite added 38.85 points, or 0.48%, to 8,192.43.
Volume on US exchanges was 10.93 billion shares, compared with the 14.80 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.
"What you're seeing at the end of the day is investors who are sitting with too much cash are buying on the dips," said Dennis Dick, head of market structure and proprietary trader at Bright Trading in Las Vegas. "I think that trend continues unless the news flow gets predominantly worse."
Carnival Corp, Royal Caribbean Cruises and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings tumbled as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention extended its "no sail order" for all cruise ships.
Ford Motor Co shed 3.9% after the carmaker projected a quarterly adjusted loss before interest and taxes to be about $600 million, compared with a profit of $2.4 billion a year earlier.
Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 2.57-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.61-to-1 ratio favoured decliners.
The S&P 500 posted 3 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 15 new highs and 13 new lows.