Wall Street rally stalls, ends week mixed

China’s virus resurgence, weak data from Europe spurs global slide.

Wall Street tapped the brakes on its recent record-setting rally Friday with a mixed finish for the major stock indexes, though the S&P 500 still ended the week with its third weekly gain in four.

The benchmark index fell 0.3%, snapping a three-day winning streak, but notched a 1.9% gain for the week. The Nasdaq eked out another record high. So did the Russell 2000 index of smaller companies, which traders have been favoring amid expectations of stronger economic growth later this year.

The uneven finish for U.S. stock indexes followed a slide in global markets that began in Asia amid worries about resurgent coronavirus cases in China and weak economic data from Europe. In the United States, disappointing earnings reports from IBM and some other companies gave cover for investors to sell and book profits after big recent gains.

The S&P 500 was coming off two straight all-time highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.6%, the Nasdaq inched up 0.1% added 1.3%.

Investors weighed another batch of company earnings reports Friday. The big theme in the early part of this earnings season is that most companies are handily beating Wall Street’s profits expectations for the last three months of 2020, with banks and some other industries leading the way.

IBM dropped 9.9% for the market’s sharpest loss after reporting weaker revenue for the last three months of 2020 than analysts had forecast. The tech giant’s revenue has been mostly shrinking for years.