Energy leads US stocks indexes to a mostly higher finish
Associated Press
A listless day on Wall Street finished with U.S. stocks eking out small gains Friday, as strength in energy, phone and industrial companies offset losses elsewhere.
Some health insurers bounced back after Sen. John McCain said he wouldn’t support the latest Republican effort to roll back the Affordable Care Act.
Real-estate and utility companies were among the biggest decliners. A new round of tensions between the U.S. and North Korea helped send bond yields lower, which weighed on banks and other financial stocks. The sector notched daily gains earlier in the week.
“Geopolitical tensions coming out of North Korea caused a flight to quality, which kind of put the brakes on the momentum in financials,” said David Schiegoleit, managing director of investments at U.S. Bank Private Wealth Management. “Today equity markets are simply moving sideways and probably digesting that.”
The stock indexes spent much of the day drifting between small gains and losses as investors weighed the latest developments in the political brinkmanship between the U.S. and North Korea.
Tensions between the two nations ratcheted up after President Donald Trump authorized stiffer sanctions in response to North Korea’s nuclear weapons advances, drawing a furious response from Pyongyang. Trump expanded the Treasury Department’s ability to target anyone conducting significant trade in goods, services or technology with North Korea, and to ban them from interacting with the U.S. financial system. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un retaliated by calling Trump “deranged” and saying he’ll “pay dearly” for his threats.