STORY: Wall Street's main indexes closed mixed on Monday as investors braced for more key economic data in the hope of gauging the Federal Reserve's next policy moves.
The Dow dropped more than a third of a percent, the S&P 500 was unchanged and the Nasdaq added two-tenths of a percent.
Investors are awaiting Wednesday's U.S. consumer price index reading and retail earnings from Walmart and Home Depot to assess demand from shoppers.
Those will be followed on Thursday by July retail sales figures, which are likely to show marginal growth.
"The data coming in right now is really important to the Fed."
Will McGough, director of investments at Prime Capital Financial, believes the central bank could - and should - issue what he called an "emergency cut" before its next policy meeting in September.
"So we're sitting here with the Fed at 5.25 to 5.5%, maybe giving guidance that rate cuts are coming, but not actually doing anything about it, when we have inflation that's normalized back to a couple of years-ago levels, we're starting to see unemployment measures tick up a little bit. So to me, the Fed needs to take action and get on board with what the data is showing that rates need to be lower..."
Money markets are still evenly betting on a 25- or 50-basis-point cut in U.S. interest rates in September, according to CME's FedWatch Tool.
Stocks on the move Monday included Starbucks, up more than 2.5% on reports that activist investor Starboard Value, which holds a stake in the coffee giant, wants the company to take steps to improve its share price.
KeyCorp jumped more than 9% after Canada's Scotiabank bought a minority stake in the U.S. regional lender in an all-stock deal worth $2.8 billion.
And JetBlue plunged more than 20% after ratings agencies S&P and Moody's downgraded the airline after it unveiled plans to raise more than $3 billion in debt.
