Regeneron Drops Almost 10%

Oil prices and stock markets worldwide kept swinging Monday with uncertainty about what will happen with the Iran war.

• The S&P 500 fell 5.45 points, or 0.1%, to 7,403.05 after swiveling between gains and losses in the morning
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 159.95 points, or 0.3%, to 49,686.12.
• The Nasdaq composite fell 134.41 points, or 0.5%, to 26,090.73.

Stock prices moved in the opposite direction of oil prices, which went from an overnight pop higher to a drop and then yo-yoed again, the AP reports.

After reaching $112.10 per barrel, the price for a barrel of Brent then fell back below $109 after President Trump said he would hold off on a military attack on Iran scheduled for Tuesday at the request of allies in the region. That kept alive hopes that a deal to open the Strait of Hormuz may still be possible. The moves for oil prices have helped make the world's bond markets the center of the action recently. Climbing yields there have cranked up the pressure on economies and stock markets worldwide. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.60% from 4.59% late Friday after swinging through the day and getting as high as 4.63%. The yield on the 10-year Japanese government bond rallied toward its highest level since the late 1990s.

• Yields worldwide have been climbing on fears about higher inflation caused by higher oil prices, which in turn could push central banks not only to abandon the possibility of cutting interest rates but also consider hiking rates. Higher rates would slow inflation but at the cost of hurting the economy and dragging on prices for stocks and other investments.

On Wall Street, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals dropped 9.8% to help lead the US stock market lower after reporting discouraging data from a trial of a treatment for melanoma. NextEra Energy fell 4.6% after agreeing to buy Dominion Energy in an all-stock deal to create the world's largest regulated electric utility by market value. Dominion rallied 9.4%. Delta Air Lines finished essentially flat after swinging up and down through the day because of oil prices. It got a boost early following news that Berkshire Hathaway bought more than $2.6 billion of the airline's stock.

Boston Scientific was another winner and climbed 6.2% after saying it would spend $2 billion of its previously announced $5 billion stock buyback program by the end of June. Such purchases send cash directly to investors and boost the company's per-share earnings. This upcoming week will offer little in terms of data on the US economy, but a heavily anticipated report on Nvidia's latest quarterly results will arrive Wednesday. The chip company has routinely blown past analysts' expectations each quarter, while forecasting even bigger growth than Wall Street had thought. It will likely need to keep up such momentum to keep AI stocks driving the market to more records.