Stock market today: Wall Street leans toward losses early Monday as markets await more earnings

Wall Street tipped toward losses before the open on Monday as markets gird for another busy week of corporate earnings reports.

Futures for the S&P 500 fell 0.4% before the bell, while futures for the Dow Jones industrials ticked down 0.2%.

Boeing rose 3.1% after the troubled aerospace giant offered the union representing striking machinists a new contract proposal over the weekend. The proposed deal would provide bigger pay raises and bonuses in a bid to end a costly walkout that has crippled production of airplanes for more than a month. The union plans to hold a ratification vote on Wednesday, the same day Boeing reports its third-quarter earnings.

Kenvue, the consumer health brands company that Johnson & Johnson spun off last year, climbed 8.2% on a Wall Street Journal report that activist investor Starboard Value had taken a significant stake in the maker of Band-Aids and Tylenol. Before Monday's premarket rally, Kenvue shares had lost about a fifth of their value since the company started trading publicly in May of 2023.

Companies reporting earnings later this week include General Motors, Tesla, Coca-Cola, and Southwest and American airlines.

In Asia, shares were mixed on Monday, with Hong Kong's Hang Seng sinking 1.5% to 20,869.39, while the Shanghai Composite gained 0.2% to 3,268.11. The A-share index of the smaller market in Shenzhen picked up 1.6%.

China cut its one-year and five-year Loan Prime Rates, which are reference rates for lending. Lower rates can help reduce pressure on borrowers, particulary property developers that have suffered following a crackdown on excessive borrowing several years ago. But any impact on market sentiment appeared to be short-lived.

Given that the main constrain is weak demand, the “heavy lifting” will have to come from government spending, Zichun Huang of Capital Economics said in a report. China's Finance Ministry has pledged to ramp up such outlays in coming months, “However, we are still skeptical that fiscal easing will be large enough to deliver anything more than a modest and short-lived pick-up in activity.”

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index edged 0.1% lower to 38,954.60, while the Kospi in Seoul advanced 0.4% to 2,604.92. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 closed 0.7% higher at 8,344.40.

In Europe at midday, France's CAC 40 tumbled 1% and Germany's DAX was down 0.9%. Britain's FTSE 100 lost 0.2%.

Oil prices climbed after tumbling last week as worries receded that Israel will attack Iranian oil facilities as part of its retaliation for Iran’s missile attack early this month. Iran is a major producer of crude, and a strike could upend its exports to China and elsewhere. Concerns about the strength of demand from China have also hit oil prices.

Early Monday, U.S. benchmark crude was up $1.48 at $70.17 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard, picked up $1.33 to $74.39 per barrel.

The dollar rose to 149.91 Japanese yen from 149.57 yen late Friday. The yen has weakened recently on expectations that the pace of interest rate hikes by the Bank of Japan may be slower than earlier thought.

The euro slipped to $1.0852 from $1.0866 late Friday.

FILE - People pass the New York Stock Exchange, at rear, in New York's Financial District on Oct. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

FILE - A man approaches an entrance to the New York Stock Exchange on Sept. 26, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, right, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Currency traders watch monitors at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A currency trader reads documents near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

HAVANA (AP) — Cubans took to the streets in protest as widespread blackouts stretched into their fourth day, their concerns heightened as Hurricane Oscar crossed the island’s eastern coast with winds and heavy rain.

In Santo Suárez, part of a populous neighborhood in southwestern Havana, people went into the streets banging pots and pans in protest Sunday night.

“We haven’t had electricity for three nights, and our food is rotting. Four days without electricity is an abuse to the children,” resident Mary Karla, a mother of three children, told The Associated Press. She didn't give her surname.

The protesters, who say they have no water either, blocked the street with garbage.

Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy said in a news conference he hopes the electricity grid will be restored on Monday or Tuesday morning.

But he said that Oscar, which made landfall on the eastern coast Sunday evening, will bring “an additional inconvenience” to Cuba's recovery since it will touch a “region of strong (electricity) generation.” Key Cuban power plants, such as Felton in the city of Holguín, and Renté in Santiago de Cuba, are located in the area.

Oscar later weakened to a tropical storm but its effects were forecast to linger in the island through Monday.

Some neighborhoods had electricity restored in Cuba’s capital, where 2 million people live, but most of Havana remained dark. The impact of the blackout goes beyond lighting, as services like water supply also depend on electricity to run pumps.

People resorted to cooking with improvised wood stoves on the streets before the food went bad in refrigerators.

In tears, Ylenis de la Caridad Napoles, mother of a 7-year-old girl, says she is reaching a point of “desperation.”

The failure of the Antonio Guiteras plant on Friday, which caused the collapse of the island's whole system, was just the latest in a series of problems with energy distribution in a country where electricity has been restricted and rotated to different regions at different times of the day. The status of Cuba's other power plants was unclear.

People lined up for hours on Sunday to buy bread in the few bakeries that could reopen.

Some Cubans like Rosa Rodríguez have been without electricity for four days.

“We have millions of problems, and none of them are solved,” said Rodríguez. “We must come to get bread, because the local bakery is closed, and they bring it from somewhere else.”

The blackout was considered to be Cuba’s worst since Hurricane Ian hit the island as a Category 3 storm in 2022 and damaged power installations. It took days for the government to fix them. This year, some homes have spent up to eight hours a day without electricity.

Cuba’s government had said Saturday that some electricity had been restored. But the 500 megawatts of energy in the island’s electricity grid, far short of the usual 3 gigawatts it needs, had quickly decreased to 370 megawatts.

Even in a country that is used to outages as part of a deepening economic crisis, Friday’s collapse was massive.

The Cuban government has announced emergency measures to slash electricity demand, including suspending school and university classes, shutting down some state-owned workplaces and canceling nonessential services.

Local authorities said the outage stemmed from increased demand from small- and medium-sized companies and residential air conditioners. Later, the blackout got worse because of breakdowns in old thermoelectric plants that haven’t been properly maintained, and the lack of fuel to operate some facilities.

Cuba's energy minister said the country's grid would be in better shape if there had not been two more partial blackouts as authorities tried to reconnect on Saturday. De la O Levy also said Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Russia, among other nations, had offered to help.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

A resident walks his bicycle during a blackout following the failure of a major power plant in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Residents pass the time at the malecon during a blackout following the failure of a major power plant in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Residents pass the time during a blackout following the failure of a major power plant in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Residents walk on a street during a blackout following the failure of a major power plant in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Residents walk on a street during a blackout following the failure of a major power plant in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Residents walk on a street during a blackout following the failure of a major power plant in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

A resident walks his bicycle during a blackout following the failure of a major power plant in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

A resident looks at his cell phone on the street during a blackout following the failure of a major power plant in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Residents walk on a street during a blackout following the failure of a major power plant in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Residents protest by banging pots and pans in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)