The benchmark US equity indices were mixed and traded in a narrow range on the eve of the latest Federal Reserve monetary policy meeting and with US-China trade talks poised to resume in Shanghai - Dow up +29-points or +0.11%, with Home Depot (up +0.52%), Intel Corp (+1.78%) and Merck & Co Inc (+1.30%) among the leading index performers. The broader S&P500 slipped -0.16%, with Financials (down -0.78%), Consumer Discretionary (-0.58%) and Communication Services (-0.47%) the key sector drags. Bloomberg reported that Citigroup Inc (down -0.55%) is combining their equity trading business with its prime brokerage unit and also plans to lay off hundreds of equity and fixed income tradersThe technology-centric NASDAQ eased -0.44%, with index heavyweights Amazon.com Inc (down -1.5%), Microsoft Corp (-0.2%) and Facebook Inc (-1.9%). Uber Inc (down -1.44%) announced it is laying off 400 employees in its marketing team, representing about a quarter of the marketing team’s global workforce of ~1,200 people. In merger and acquisition (M&A) news, drugmaker Pfizer Inc (down -3.81%) plans to divest its off-patent drug business and marry it with generic-drug maker Mylan NV (up +12.57%) The combined company, which will market Mylan’s EpiPen and Pfizer’s Viagra, will be domiciled in the US.
