Wall Street ended lower on Friday as continuing trade tensions pulled industrial and tech shares down, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average capped a fourth straight week of losses in its longest weekly losing streak in three years.
While all three major US indices struggled for direction for much of the session, they turned decisively negative following a report from CNBC that US-China trade negotiations have stalled.
The S&P 500 and the NASDAQ Composite suffered their second successive weekly declines after US stocks failed to fully recover from Monday’s steep sell-off.
“It is not unusual for stocks to weaken at the end of a week,” said Peter Tuz, president of Chase Investment Counsel Corp in Charlottesville, Virginia. “The possibility of something weird happening over the weekend leads people to take money off the table as the week comes to a close.”
China added fuel to the fire of the increasingly rancorous trade spat with the US, striking a more aggressive tone and suggesting that further talks could be fruitless unless Washington changes course.
Elsewhere in the multifront spat, US President Donald Trump confirmed he would delay imposing imported auto tariffs by as much as six months, and agreed to lift metal tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
Trade headlines overshadowed upbeat economic data. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index this month jumped 5.3 percent to its highest reading in 15 years.
“After earnings season the market seems to shift to these macro factors that are difficult to predict and difficult to trade on,” Tuz added. “You see more whipsawing in the markets in this kind of environment.”
Tariff jitters also dragged on key industrial shares.
Farm equipment maker Deere & Co was the biggest percentage loser on the S&P 500, dipping 7.7 percent after cutting its full-year forecast.
Caterpillar Inc, 3M Co, Textron, General Dynamics and Fedex Corp all helped pull the industrial sector 1.1 percent lower.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 98.68 points, or 0.38 percent, to 25,764, the S&P 500 lost 16.79 points, or 0.58 percent, to 2,859.53 and the NASDAQ Composite dropped 81.76 points, or 1.04 percent, to 7,816.29.
For the week, the Dow lost 0.7 percent, the S&P slipped 0.8 percent and the NASDAQ fell 1.3 percent.
Of the 11 major sectors in the S&P 500, all but utilities closed in the red.
With 460 of S&P 500 companies having posted first-quarter results, 75.2 percent of which beat analyst expectations, the mostly upbeat first-quarter earnings season is nearly complete.
Analysts now expect first-quarter earnings growth of 1.4 percent, a significant turnaround from the 2 percent loss expected on April 1.
Active wear company Under Armour Inc gained 7.8 percent following JP Morgan’s upgrade of the stock to “overweight.”
Pinterest Inc slumped 13.5 percent after its first quarterly earnings report as a publicly traded company.
Shares of Luckin Coffee Inc (瑞幸咖啡) jumped 19.9 percent as the Chinese challenger to Starbucks Corp made its debut.
Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the New York Stock Exchange by a 2.96-to-1 ratio; on NASDAQ, a 2.52-to-1 ratio favored decliners.
The S&P 500 posted 33 new 52-week highs and six new lows; the NASDAQ Composite recorded 55 new highs and 101 new lows.
Volume on US exchanges was 6.71 billion shares, compared with the 6.98 billion average over the past 20 trading days.
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