The gains for Schwab and 3M helped offset a 12.6 per cent drop for Walgreen Boots Alliance. The US Justice Department accused Walgreens late Friday of filling millions of prescriptions without a legitimate purpose, including for dangerous amounts of opioids. In the lawsuit, the government says the drugstore chain’s pharmacists filled controlled substance prescriptions with clear red flags that indicated they were highly likely to be unlawful.
Walgreens, one of the country’s largest pharmacy chains with over 8000 locations, said in a statement that it stands behind its pharmacists and “will not stand by and allow the government to put our pharmacists in a no-win situation, trying to comply with “rules” that simply do not exist.”
In the bond market, Treasury yields eased to give back some of the big gains they’d made in recent months amid worries about inflation remaining difficult to fully subdue.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.57 per cent from 4.62 per cent late Friday. Like the US stock market, bond trading had been closed on Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
The 10-year Treasury yield has been regressing since an encouraging update on inflation last week, but it’s still well above where it was in September, when it was below 3.65 per cent.
Morgan Stanley strategist Michael Wilson said the main driver for the overall US stock market appears to be what such longer-term interest rates are doing. He expects the pattern to continue, where stocks drop when yields rise and vice-versa, at least until the 10-year Treasury yield falls below 4.50 per cent on a sustainable basis, among other things.
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In stock markets abroad, indexes rose slightly across Europe after finishing mixed in Asia.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 0.9 per cent after embattled Chinese property developer Country Garden got a reprieve on its deadline for working out an agreement with its creditors.
In the cryptocurrency market, which has surged amid hopes Trump will make Washington friendlier to the industry, bitcoin pulled back from its record above $US109,000 set on Monday and was sitting below $US106,000.
