Stocks Slide Over South Korean Report That China Has Deployed 150,000 Troops To North Korean Border

NASDAQ.com reports:

The benchmark averages have surrendered earlier gains on news that China has deployed 150,000 troops to the North Korean border, and the U.S. is considering further sanctions against Russia. The reports caused the S&P 500 to falter at trendline resistance at 2,370 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average to fall back to support at the 50-day moving average.

Stocks were cautiously higher before Monday’s open amid geopolitical pressures and jitters ahead of Q1 earnings from the country’s largest banks. As the morning progressed, the averages gained altitude before running into a wall of resistance that was exacerbated by reports of troop deployments on the Chinese border with North Korea by a Korean news agency.

More about the as yet unconfirmed troops movements:

According to Chosun, a Korean news agency, the People’s Republic of China has moved an estimated 150,000 troops to the border of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (a.k.a. North Korea) in order to prepare for “unforeseen circumstances.” Among such unforeseen circumstances? The possibility of “military action” by the United States.

Over the weekend, U.S. president Donald Trump ordered the U.S.S. Carl Vinson – a 1980 Nimitz-class aircraft carrier – and three guided-missile destroyers to break off planned exercises in Australia and head toward the Korean peninsula.

This redirection was ostensibly ordered in response to North Korea’s latest missile test – in which a nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic missile called the Pukguksong-2 was successfully fired for the second time.