Wall Street camps out with the dogs

The main U.S. indexes are little changed early on Tuesday with industrial stocks leading gains among S&P 500 sectors, while consumer staples stocks sag.

Joe Mazzola, head of trading and derivatives strategist at Charles Schwab, suggested that stocks were merely camping out as they waited for the next key economic report, with July's crucial consumer price index reading due out on Wednesday.

"The dog days of summer are here, characterized by thin volume, narrow index moves, and a lighter earnings flow, while market participants cast a wary eye on Treasury yields that keep tightening the vise," Mazzola wrote.

Meanwhile, traders had a mixed bag of reports to sift through.

U.S. small-business sentiment increased in July amid a surge in owners reporting plans to boost hiring, according to the National Federation of Independent Business. Its Small Business Optimism Index rose 2.4 points to 99.8 last month, the highest level since August 2025 and surpassing its 52-year average of 98.0.

But separately, the National Association of Realtors said U.S. existing home sales fell for a second straight month in July, and that the market would be thriving if mortgage rates were lower.

Oil prices are close to flat after hitting their highest for more than a week as analysts assessed talks between Oman and Iran over shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Bloomberg News reported that Pakistan's Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said in an interview that the United States and Iran are close to "some sort of an arrangement."

Still, sources said that three crew members were killed in a suspected attack by Iran-backed Houthis on a small cargo vessel in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on Tuesday while a container ship was hit by a missile off Pakistan in a suspected U.S. attack.

Here is your morning snapshot from 10:28 a.m. ET (1428 GMT):