Markets mixed as US readies for earnings season

Markets were mixed on Monday.

The S&P 500 rose 0.1 percent but the STOXX Europe 600 fell 0.2 percent and the Nikkei 225 fell 0.2 percent.

“There are many skeptics of this bull market, and so when the market goes up a bit as it did last week, they take the opportunity to get out,” said Craig Callahan, president of Icon funds.

Still, Richard Jerram, chief economist at Bank of Singapore, thinks that the US March employment report released on Friday “really killed the fears that people had a month ago” about the US economy, which Jerram said was in “really good shape”.

That said, with the US earnings season starting this week, DataTrek Research’s Nicholas Colas warned that “once you have to face the actual earnings results, I think the story is going to change”.