NEW YORK — Stocks wavered Friday as oil prices slipped for the first time in a week, but Wall Street is still heading for a losing week.
The S&P 500 fell 0.1 per cent. The index is on track for its second consecutive losing week, which hasn’t happened since March.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 76 points, or 0.2 per cent, as of 9:53 a.m. Eastern time. The Nasdaq fell 0.6 per cent., weighed down by sharp losses from several big stocks. Both indexes are also on track for weekly losses.
Micron Technology fell 5.7 per cent and Broadcom fell 2.8 per cent. Both companies have large market values that tend to weigh more heavily on the market. They were big reasons for the technology-heavy Nasdaq losing more ground and for the broader market being kept in check despite more gainers than losers within the S&P 500.
Wall Street is closing out a week of increasing pressure from a sharp escalation in the U.S. war with Iran. Heavy fighting in the Middle East again threatened to slow the global flow of oil and gas.
Brent crude, the international standard, fell 2.8 per cent to US$97.89. It has generally been rising all week and moved back above US$100 on Thursday before easing a bit. Before the Iran war began in late February it was trading around US$72 per barrel.
Bond yields also eased and relieved some of the pressure on stocks. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.68 per cent from 4.71 per cent late Thursday.
Markets in Europe gained ground, while Asian markets closed lower.
The U.S. is also ramping up its global trade war with a fresh round of tariffs on dozens of nations. The new round of tariffs impacts nearly all U.S. imports and they are paid by companies importing those goods, who then typically pass the added costs along to consumers. That move came just as the clock was running out Friday on stopgap levies the president imposed after a stinging defeat for other such tariffs at the Supreme Court.
___
Damian J. Troise, The Associated Press
AP Business Writers Elaine Kurtenbach and Matt Ott contributed to this report.
