Stock market today: Honda-Nissan merger talks shake up otherwise quiet morning on Wall Street

Wall Street pointed slightly lower early Monday, kicking off a holiday-shortened week with little market-moving news expected.

Futures for the S&P 500 were down less than 0.1% before the bell Monday, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.2%.

Japanese automakers Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Corp. announced that they will work toward a possible merger that might also include Nissan's smaller alliance partner Mitsubishi Motors Corp. Honda's shares, which fell after news of the talks on a deal surfaced last week, jumped 16%. Nissan shares were down less than 1%.

Eli Lilly rose nearly 2% after it announced that the Food and Drug Administration had approved its Zepbound drug as the first and only prescription medicine for adults with sleep apnea. Zepbound was already approved and on the market to treat obesity.

The Container Store filed for bankruptcy protection as the storage and organizational goods retailer with roots dating back to 1978 grapples with mounting losses and cash flow shortages. The bankruptcy filing in Texas on Sunday came two weeks after shares of The Container Store Group Inc. were delisted by the New York Stock Exchange.

Coming later Monday is the Conference Board's latest consumer confidence survey, followed by new home sales data on Tuesday and the weekly jobless claims report on Thursday.

In Europe at midday, Germany's DAX fell 0.3%, the CAC 40 in Paris slid 0.3%, while Britain's FTSE shed 0.2%.

In Asian trading, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 index jumped 1.2% to 39,161.34, while the dollar was trading at 156.50 Japanese yen, up from 156.48 yen.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 0.8% to 19,883.13, while the Shanghai Composite index slipped 0.5% to 3,351.26.

Australia's S&P/ASX 500 jumped 1.7% to 8,201.60.

South Korea's Kospi added 1.6% to 2,442.01 and Taiwan's Taiex jumped 2.6%, with TSMC, the world's biggest computer chip maker, gaining 4.4%. Hon Hai Precision Industry, which reportedly had been maneuvering to buy a big stake in Nissan, jumped 3.8%.

In Bangkok, the SET advanced 1.4%.

In other dealings early Monday, U.S. benchmark crude oil picked up 24 cents to $69.70 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, was up 24 cents at $73.18.

The euro fell to $1.0415 from $1.0433.