“Chinese Ban on Micron Technology Products and Record Fine for Meta Platforms Cause Wall Street Hesitation”

Micron Technology was among the biggest fallers on the New York stock exchanges. Chinese companies are no longer allowed by the Chinese authorities to buy certain products from the American manufacturer of memory chips. Beijing says Micron’s products pose a threat to national security. China seems to be responding to the export restrictions of advanced chip technologies to the country by Western countries. Micron shares were lowered 2.9 percent. Other chipmakers such as Nvidia and Qualcomm lost up to 0.6 percent.

Meta Platforms (plus 1.1 percent) were also in the spotlight. European privacy regulators have imposed a record fine of 1.2 billion euros on the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The group would have forwarded user data to the United States, without ensuring that their privacy would be guaranteed there. Meta has already indicated that it will appeal.

Joe Biden

The overall mood on Wall Street was hesitant. Investors took little risk ahead of negotiations on raising the US government’s debt ceiling. Negotiations stalled on Friday because the Democrats and Republicans could not agree. On Monday, talks between President Joe Biden, who was in Japan for the G7 summit in recent days, and Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy resumed. Without a political agreement, the United States would run out of money around June 1.

The leading Dow Jones index ended 0.4 percent lower at 33,286.58 points. The broader S&P 500 closed a fraction higher at 4192.63 points and tech indicator Nasdaq climbed 0.5 percent to 12,720.78 points.

Apple

PacWest Bancorp shot up nearly 20 percent. The regional bank sells $2.6 billion in real estate loans to real estate investor Kennedy Wilson.

DraftKings rose 4.6 percent. Analysts from the Swiss bank UBS increased the advice for the company that is active in sports betting. Apple fell 0.6 percent. Analysts at Loop Capital expect the iPhone maker’s sales to be disappointing this quarter and removed the stock from their buy list.