US stock indices nestled a hair lower on Friday after the falling price of oil weighed on energy companies, but the S&P 500 nevertheless closed out its third straight winning week following a brutal stretch last month.
It was a day full of broken streaks — oil fell for the first time in two weeks and the yield on the 10-year Treasury note sank to its first loss in more than a week — but the market remained calm through it.
Gradual moves for markets in the past few days have offered a respite following the tumultuous trading that rocked investors late last year.
“After some of the initial gains we saw earlier in the week I think it’s just a rally looking tired,” said Willie Delwiche, investment strategist at Robert W. Baird & Co. “I think it’s probably not much more than a chance for people to digest the move and try to get a sense of whether we’ve had a bounce — and this is it — or maybe a pause as we continue to move higher.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 5.97 points, or less than 0.1 percent, to 23,995.95.
The S&P 500 on Friday edged down by 0.38 points, or less than 0.1 percent, to 2,596.26. Last month, a typical day for the index was a swing 10 times that.
The NASDAQ Composite lost 14.59, or 0.2 percent, to 6,971.48, and the Russell 2000 index of smaller stocks ticked up by 1.95, or 0.1 percent, to 1,447.38.
It was the first loss for the S&P 500 in six days and much of the reason for it was the falling price of oil. That helped pull energy stocks in the S&P 500 down 0.6 percent, the largest loss among the 11 sectors that make up the index.
ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil Corp and Hess Corp all fell more than 1 percent on Friday.
For the week, the Dow Jones rose 2.4 percent, the S&P added 2.5 percent and the NASDAQ gained 3.5 percent.
The three-week winning streak for the S&P 500 is its longest since August last year. The past three weeks of gains have all been of more than 1.8 percent. The last time that happened was in 2001.
The S&P 500 has been clawing back gains since running to the edge of what traders call a “bear market,” when it dropped 19.8 percent between setting a record in September and a low on Christmas Eve.
Stocks have climbed on soothing words from the US Federal Reserve about the path of interest rates, plus hopes that the US-China trade dispute might ease.
That has helped to at least paper over worries about slowing growth for corporate earnings and the possibility of a looming recession.
Companies across the US are gearing up to report how much profit they made in the final three months of last year and expectations are for a fifth straight quarter of growth topping 10 percent.
General Motors Co gave an encouraging sign on Friday when it released better-than-expected profit forecasts for both last year and this year. That helped the automaker surge to the biggest gain in the S&P 500 and it jumped US$2.45, or 7.1 percent, to US$37.18.
Other big-name companies have offered a more discouraging picture of revenue trends due to slowing growth in China and elsewhere.
That is why analysts have said the upcoming earnings reporting season, which starts in earnest next week, could be the next trigger for volatility in the market.
Delwiche said he wants to hear how optimistic chief executives are given all the uncertainties about the US economy.
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