Stock market today: Wall Street hovers around records ahead of Nvidia earnings and inflation data

Wall Street is hovering around record highs at the start of a week featuring another full slate of corporate earnings and the government’s latest inflation reading.

The S&P 500 was down 0.4% in afternoon trading Monday. The benchmark index is within 1% of its record set in July. The Dow Jones Industrial average rose 46 points, or 0.1%, to 41,221 as of 2:35 p.m. Eastern. It is on track for a record.

The Nasdaq fell 0.8%. It was weighed down by several technology companies that tend to tip the market because of their big values. Microsoft fell 1%.

The price of U.S. crude oil jumped 3.5% after Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah traded heavy fire on Sunday, triggering potential supply worries.

Bond yields held relatively steady. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 3.81% from 3.80% late Friday.

Investors have a busy week ahead that kicked off Monday with a surprisingly good report showing that orders for long-lasting goods from U.S. factories, including cars, jumped 9.9% in July. An update on consumer confidence is on tap for Tuesday and the U.S. will provide a revised estimate on Thursday of economic growth during the second quarter.

Semiconductor company Nvidia reports its latest financial results on Wednesday. It has been a big beneficiary of Wall Street’s mania around artificial intelligence, becoming one of the stock market’s most massive companies, with a total value topping $3 trillion. Its stock slipped 2.1% Monday, but it is up 155% for the year.

Shares in other chipmakers also fell. Broadcom was down 4%, Advanced Micro Devices dropped 3.2% and Lam Research slid 3.1%.

Others reporting this week include Kohl’s, Chewy, Salesforce and Dollar General.

The key report for investors this week will come on Friday, when the the government serves up its latest data on inflation with the PCE, or personal consumption and expenditures report for July. It is the Federal Reserve's preferred measure of inflation.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell strongly signaled on Friday that the central bank is planning to start cutting its benchmark interest rate, which currently stands at a two-decade high. The Fed raised interest rates in order to tame inflation back to its target of 2%. The final push to the target has been elusive.

Inflation has been steadily easing and economists polled by FactSet expect the latest PCE data to show a 2.6% inflation reading. The PCE was as high as 7.1% in the middle of 2022.

The Fed has been trying to tame inflation by slowing economic growth, but not by so much that it causes a recession. The dynamics of its concerns have shifted.

“Recent commentary coming out of conversations with Fed officials shows they care more about the risk of the economy slowing,” said Nathan Thooft, chief investment officer and senior portfolio manager at Manulife Investment Management.

Traders are forecasting a rate cut to come at the Fed's meeting in September. They expect the central bank to trim its main interest rate by at least 1 percentage point by the end of the year, according to data from CME Group.