Late Burst of Buying Leaves Indexes Mixed

A late-day recovery erased much of the early losses on Wall Street, leaving major indexes mixed at the close.

The burst of buying Friday brought the S&P 500 barely higher for the week, marking its second weekly gain in a row.

The market is coming off a steep drop in December, followed by the best January in three decades.

With less than a month to go before a cease-fire expires in the tariff fight between the U.S. and China, traders have been watching closely for any signs of progress. So far, there’s no deal on the horizon.

STOCK MARKET UPDATE

KEEPING SCORE: The S&P 500 edged up 1 point to 2,707. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 63 points, or 0.3 percent, to 25,106. The Nasdaq edged up 9 points, or 0.1 percent, to 7,298.

Major indexes in Europe declined.

THE QUOTE: “It’s the third day in a row of a down market and after we’ve had such a positive and optimistic last couple of weeks, it’s just natural for investors to take a look back and revaluate,” said Karyn Cavanaugh, senior markets strategist at Voya Investment Management.

SCREECHING HALT: Goodyear Tire & Rubber plunged 8.8 percent, one of the biggest losses in the S&P 500 index, after reporting weaker-than-expected profit for the latest quarter. It cited some weakness in China, which has been a big source of concern for investors recently.

The world’s second-largest economy is in the midst of a sharp economic slowdown, and it’s a huge market for many big U.S. companies.

PLAY TIME: Mattel surged to one of the biggest gains in the S&P 500 after reporting a bigger-than-expected profit for its latest quarter. Its stock leaped 22.3 percent.

Rival Hasbro, though, fell after its own earnings report fell short of Wall Street’s expectations. Its stock dropped 2.7 percent.

CHIPPED AWAY: Chipmaker Qorvo declined 2.7 percent despite reporting stronger earnings for its latest quarter than Wall Street expected. Investors focused instead on its revenue forecast for the current quarter, which was below analysts’ expectations. The company said cited weakness across the smartphone market.

TABLOID SAGA: Amazon.com dropped 1.8 percent after its CEO, Jeff Bezos, said he was the target of blackmail by the publisher of the National Enquirer, which he said threatened to publish revealing personal photos of him. Bezos, who is also the owner of the Washington Post, has been locked in an increasingly tense standoff with President Donald Trump, and the Enquirer has been a strong backer of Trump in the past. The Enquirer’s publisher said Friday that it acted lawfully while reporting the story and will look into the claims.

Amazon is one of the biggest stocks in the S&P 500, so its movements have a larger effect on index funds than other stocks.

TRADE CONCERNS: Markets around the world have been lurching up and down in recent months as investors worry about fallout from the U.S.-China trade dispute. President Donald Trump said Thursday that he doesn’t plan to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping before their cease-fire on tariffs expires in early March.

Unless American and Chinese negotiators come to a new agreement, the U.S. is expected to raise import taxes from 10 percent to 25 percent for $200 billion in Chinese goods. The trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies, which has cooled in recent months, has weighed on the outlook of businesses and the global economy.

Trump’s announcement weighed on markets around the world, and indexes in Europe and Asia mostly fell.

YIELDS: The yield on the 10-year Treasury note dropped to 2.63 percent from 2.65 percent late Thursday. It had been above 3 percent as recently as December.