Losses for banks pull US stocks further from highs

Associated Press

NEW YORK

U.S. stocks finished lower Monday for the second time in the last three trading days. Banks gave back some of their recent gains after a jump in interest rates last week sent them sharply higher.

Mining and chemical companies declined after China cut its economic growth forecast, and airlines slumped after a Delta said its business isn’t improving as fast as it hoped. There were few winners to be found on Wall Street as more than two-thirds of the stocks on the New York Stock Exchange fell. That included consistent losses for banks, investment firms and insurance companies.

All four indexes reached all-time highs last week, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq have risen for six weeks in a row. That’s on top of a big surge in November and December. Those rapid gains the last few months have prompted some analysts to turn cautious.

“We think there’s a reasonable chance at the end of the year we’ll be a little bit lower than we are right now,” said Scott Wren, senior global equity strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

Over the weekend Premier Li Keqiang, China’s top economic official, trimmed the country’s growth target to 6.5 percent. The Chinese economy is the second-largest in the world, and the prospect of slower growth there hurt mining, packaging and chemical companies and sent the price of copper lower.

Bond prices continued to slip. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.49 percent from 2.48 percent. Bond yields jumped last week as investors grew more certain the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates this month.