Wall Street opens higher as Apple slips ahead of results

Wall Street’s main indexes opened higher on Monday, the first trading day of November, while Apple shares edged down ahead of the company’s quarterly results, due later in the day.

Shortly after the opening bell, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.8% at 52,186 points. The S&P 500 gained 0.5% to 7,620, while the Nasdaq rose 0.7% to 25,615.

Apple fell 0.4%. The results will be the first reported under chief executive John Ternus, who succeeded Tim Cook on 1 September. In the previous quarter, Apple’s revenue and profit rose sharply, driven mainly by higher iPhone sales, according to ANP.

Investors were also looking towards Tuesday’s US midterm elections. Technology stocks had come under pressure the previous week after disappointing results from Intel and Amazon revived concerns about whether heavy investment in artificial intelligence can be recouped. Intel fell nearly 29% on Friday and was down a further 2.7% early on Monday.

Oil prices fell amid hopes of an end to the war in the Middle East, weighing on energy shares: ExxonMobil and Chevron were down by as much as 2.6%. Marvell Technology fell nearly 6% after agreeing to buy data-centre optical equipment maker Lumentum Holdings in an all-share deal valued at $115 billion, ANP reported.

Apple had overtaken Nvidia as the world’s most valuable company by Friday’s close, when its market value stood at $5 trillion, compared with Nvidia’s $4.9 trillion, the report said.