OREANDA-NEWS   Doubts about achieving peace in the Middle East in the near future after another round of escalating tensions between the United States and Iran had a negative impact on investors, Trading Economics reports.

At the same time, U.S. Bank Wealth Management analyst Tom Heinlin believes that although the markets are influenced by news from the Middle East, "but now it's the reporting season for the first quarter, so the question arises whether this situation has affected the real economy." "So far, there have been reports from banks that consumer lending and consumer spending are looking good," he said.

This week, large companies such as Tesla, IBM and Intel Corp., as well as defense giants Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and RTX are planning to publish quarterly reports.

According to LSEG I/B/E/S, analysts forecast earnings growth of companies whose shares are included in the S&P 500 calculation in the first quarter by an average of 14.4% year-on-year. This is better than last year's figure, when in January-March the increase was 13.7%.

Over the weekend, The Information reported, citing sources, that Google, part of Alphabet, is in talks with Marvell Technology to develop two new chips for more efficient operation of AI models. On this news, the share price of Marvell Technology jumped 5.8% on Monday.

Oil prices rose, which contributed to an increase in the value of securities of representatives of this industry, including Exxon Mobil - by 0.9%, ConocoPhillips - by 0.4%, Occidental Petroleum - by 1.3%, APA Corp. - by 0.6%.

Apple Inc. shares rose by 1%, Boeing Co. - by 0.8%, Salesforce Inc. - by 2.3%, JPMorgan Chase & Co. - by 2.2%, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. - by 1.7%, Nvidia Corp. - by 0.2%.

Construction goods distributor QXO Inc. has announced an agreement to purchase rival TopBuild for approximately $17 billion. The stock prices of QXO decreased by 3.1%, TopBuild - soared by 19.4%.

American Airlines Group has said it is not interested in a merger with rival United Airlines Holdings and has not held any talks on the subject, refuting media reports that reported on it last week. The shares of the first airline fell by 4.2%, the second - by 2.8%.

The value of securities of other airline and travel companies also decreased, including Southwest Airlines Co. - by 2.1%, cruise operators Norwegian Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean Group - by 3.5% and 1.1%, respectively.

Promotions Amazon.com Inc. fell 0.9%, Tesla - 2%, Intel Corp. - by 4.1%, Netflix Inc. - by 2.6%, Microsoft Corp. - by 1.1%, Alphabet Inc. - by 1.3%.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Monday fell by 4.87 points (0.01%) to 49442.56 points.

The value of the Standard & Poor's 500 decreased by 16.92 points (0.24%) to 7,109.14 points at the end of trading.

The Nasdaq Composite index lost 64.09 points (-0.26%) and ended the session at 24,404.39 points.