Stocks ended little changed Friday, as ongoing signs of the economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic compounded with fears of rising U.S.-China tensions.
As a slew of quarterly corporate earnings results came in mixed, each of the three major U.S. equity indices posted weekly advances of about 3%, with investors largely factoring in the fallout from the COVID-19 crisis into asset prices.
But a new source of uncertainty surfaced on Friday, after U.S. senators introducing a bipartisan bill that would sanction Chinese officials and organizations who enforce newly introduced security measures in Hong Kong. This came after the Senate passed a bill that would make it more difficult for Chinese companies to list on U.S. stock exchanges, which kept all three major indices hemmed in tight ranges.
Overnight, Chinese officials at their National People’s Congress in Beijing declined to provide an annual gross domestic product target for the country’s economic growth for the first time since the practice began about three decades ago, underscoring the economic impact from the coronavirus pandemic. During the first quarter, China’s quarterly GDP growth turned negative for the first time on record, plunging by 6.8%.
Although layoffs in the world’s largest economy continue to mount, analysts believe that current data reflect how officials are finally working through a mountain of applications that overwhelmed states in the crisis’ initial stages.
Amid economic data that has remained historically weak, Federal Reserve officials have dimmed hopes of a speedy, V-shaped recovery – an outcome the stock market, up 32% from its March 23 low, has appeared more unwilling to bet against so far.
Here’s where the three major indices settled at the end of Friday’s session:
S&P 500 (^GSPC): +6.94 points (+0.24%) to 2,955.45
Dow (^DJI): -8.96 points (-0.04%) to 24,465.16
Nasdaq (^IXIC): +39.71 points (+0.43%) to 9,324.59 ♦
