Stocks are lower on another Merger Monday

Good morning!

It's a busy day for business news and political headlines, but financial markets are little-changed to start the week.

Shortly after the market open on Monday, the Dow was down about 55 points, the S&P 500 was down 5 points, and the Nasdaq was down 4. Currency markets were also little-changed, save for a rally in the Turkish lira after it touched a record low last week.

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But the big story Monday morning, of course, is news that Verizon will buy Yahoo's core business for $4.8 billion.

Yahoo shares were down about 1.5% following the news while Verizon shares were off about 0.4%.

This deal is really about Verizon expanding its digital advertising offerings as it works to compete with Facebook and Google for a bigger slice of the world's digital ad spend. Verizon executive Marni Walden is likely to be in charge of mashing together Yahoo and AOL - which Verizon acquired last year - and make hay out of two old tech giants.

On the banking side, the big winners on the deal are boutique banks - a trend that has been in place for some time - with small firms including LionTree Advisors, Allen & Company, Guggenheim Securities, and PJT Partners coming out on top.

Also: synergies.

Elsewhere in merger news, online brokerage house E-Trade announced Monday it would acquire OptionsHouse for $725 million in cash. The move is aimed at bolstering the companies derivatives offerings. Shares of E-Trade were down about 2.3% following the news.

Outerwall, which owns Coinstar cash-exchange kiosks and Redbox DVD rental boxes, will be acquired by private equity firm Apollo Global for $1.6 billion, or $52 per share. Outerwall shares rose 11.5% in early trading following the news.

On the economic data front, Monday will see just the release of the Dallas Federal Reserve's manufacturing index at 10:30 a.m. ET. Expectations are for a reading of -10.

This week, as was the case last week, most of the news headlines will be squarely focused on the Democratic convention, which has started with a nightmare for the DNC after Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Sunday she would step down after the convention following internal emails that were leaked late last week.

In the latest polls, Republican nominee Donald Trump has taken a lead over Hillary Clinton, who will be nominated as the Democratic candidate for president later this week, following a post-convention bump.