Drugmakers rally despite Trump’s plan

U.S. stock indexes ended mostly higher Friday as the market closed out its biggest weekly gain since March.

Drugmakers and other health companies climbed after investors sized up President Donald Trump’s latest plans to rein in drug prices and concluded any policy changes didn’t pose immediate threats to health care company profits.

“All of this will have to go through a year-plus regulatory process, and none of it will have immediate impact,” Terry Haines, macro research analyst at Evercore ISI, wrote Friday in a research note.

“Thus our market positive view today,” Haines added.

The health sector’s gains outweighed losses in technology stocks, phone companies and banks.

All told, the S&P 500 index-had its best weekly gain since early March with an increase of 2.4 percent.

For the week, the Dow notched a gain of 2.3 percent, while the Nasdaq finished 2.7 percent higher. The Russell 2000 picked up a gain of 2.6 percent.

Trading was choppy for much of the day as investors waited for the Trump administration to release details of its plan to control drug prices. After Trump began discussing the broad goals of his plan Friday afternoon, health care sector stocks mostly moved higher.

“Trump had a choice today: To seek disruptive fundamental reform or to embrace more incremental steps,” Haines wrote. “Trump chose the incremental over the disruptive, which is the decisive factor for markets today.”

Technology stocks, which are up 10.8 percent this year, outgaining all other sectors in the S&P 500, were among the biggest decliners Friday.

Symantec slumped 33.1 percent to $19.52 after the security software company revealed an internal investigation that could delay its annual report.

Chipmaker Nvidia reported solid quarterly results but shed some of its recent gains, sliding 2.2 percent to $254.53.

Yelp fell 7.8 percent to $44.02 after the online review portal gave an outlook for its current quarter fell short of analysts’ expectations.

TiVo slid 1.2 percent to $13.88 after the digital video recording company took a bigger-than-expected loss and reported weak revenue.

Despite some disappointing company report cards, corporate earnings have been a source of good news for investors in recent weeks.

Roughly 90 percent of the companies in the S&P 500 have reported results so far this earnings season, and 62 percent of those have delivered both earnings and revenue that exceeded financial analysts’ expectations, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Walmart, Home Depot and other retailers are due to report quarterly results next week.