Dow hits another all-time high on mixed day for U.S. stocks

Wall Street capped a milestone-setting week Friday with a mixed finish for the major U.S. stock indexes and the second all-time high in two days for the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

An afternoon sell-off erased modest gains for the S&P 500 that had the benchmark index on track to eke out its own record high for much of the day.

Losses for technology companies and retailers, two of the market’s hottest sectors this year, offset gains in energy and industrial stocks.

The S&P 500 index dropped 1.08 points, or 0.04 percent, to 2,929.67, just under its latest all-time high set a day earlier. The Dow gained 86.52 points, or 0.3 percent, to 26,743.50, thanks largely to gains in Boeing and McDonald’s.

The Nasdaq composite lost 41.28 points, or 0.5 percent, to 7,986.96. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies gave up 7.87 points, or 0.5 percent, to 1,712.32.

The Dow and S&P 500 each ended the week with their 10th weekly gain in the past 12 weeks.

Coming off Thursday’s record-setting rally, trading was listless for much of Friday. A couple of factors may have contributed to the market’s late-afternoon pullback.

Friday was “quadruple witching” day, when options and futures contracts expire, which often results in heavy trading.

Also, next Monday the S&P 500 is changing the lineup of the 11 company sectors that make up the benchmark index. Technology giants Google and Facebook will join Netflix and 15 other companies in a new communications services sector.

The change forces exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, and other funds that track the S&P 500’s sectors to make trades to reflect the new alignment of the index.

Micron Technology was among the biggest decliners in the technology sector. The chipmaker said Friday its profits would be hurt by new tariffs on Chinese imports that go into effect next week. Shares in the company slid 2.9 percent to $44.74.

The trade dispute between the U.S. and China is set to escalate Monday. That’s’ when an additional 10 percent tax on $200 billion of Chinese imports kicks in. The tariffs will rise to 25 percent on Jan 1. Beijing has said it would retaliate by imposing tariffs of 5 or 10 percent on $60 billion of U.S. goods including coffee, honey and industrial chemicals.

Still, investors have been taking the potential negative impact of the trade dispute in stride this week, drawing comfort from the latest signs that the economy is on solid ground and driving the market higher.

Benchmark U.S. crude gained 0.7 percent to settle at $70.78 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price international oils, added 0.1 percent to close at $78.80 a barrel in London.

The rise in crude oil prices sent many energy stocks higher. Cimarex Energy rose 2.1 percent to $92.34.

Shares in Duke Energy slid 1 percent to $79.82 after floodwaters inundated lake a large lake near a retired coal-fired power plant, raising concerns of a potential breach.

Bond prices were little changed. The yield on the 10-year Treasury held steady at 3.07 percent.

In other energy trading, heating oil gave up 0.1 percent to $2.23 a gallon, wholesale gasoline added 0.1 percent to $2.02 a gallon and natural gas was little changed at $2.98 per 1,000 cubic feet.