The market is waiting for the Fed meeting; Boeing pushes down DOW

U.S. stocks traded mixed midday Monday, as investors looked ahead to this week’s meeting of Federal Reserve policy makers, while losses for aircraft maker Boeing again dragged on the Dow Jones Industrial Average after The Wall Street Journal reported federal prosecutors and Transportation Department officials are probing the development of the company’s 737 MAX jetliners.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.05%  fell 22 points, or 0.1%, to 25,827, while the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.12% ticked 2 points higher to 2,825, a gain of roughly 0.1%. The Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -0.04% fell 3 points, or less than 0.1%, to 7,685. Investors were catching their breath following a rally last week that took the S&P 500 above long-term resistance at 2,800. The S&P rose 2.9% last week to end Friday at 2,822.48. The Dow rose 1.6% last week to close Friday at 25,848.87 and the Nasdaq Composite added 3.8% to end at 7,688.53.

Investors continue to keep an eye on U.S.-China trade talks. A proposed summit between President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping to end the trade battle between the two countries may be pushed back to June, the South China Morning Post reported over the weekend. The proposed meeting had been originally targeted for March, then pushed back to April amid slow-moving trade talks.

Stocks struggle for direction ahead of Fed meeting; Boeing drags on Dow, MarketWatch, Mar 18