Day ends with wave of buying

U.S. stock indexes stemmed an early slide Friday, finishing mostly higher and nudging the benchmark S&P 500 index to its second weekly gain in a row.

Gains in technology and consumer goods companies outweighed losses in financial stocks and retailers as investors continued to size up the latest batch of quarterly corporate snapshots.

Prior to a late-afternoon flurry of buying, the market had been on pace to finish lower as investors hit pause following a tumultuous two months where the index followed up its worst December since 1931 with its best January in three decades.

Technology stocks drove much of the market’s lateday recovery Friday.

Financial stocks took some of the heaviest losses and were hurt by a drop in interest rates, which can limit the profits they make from lending money.

Traders continued to weigh a mixed batch of company earnings reports Friday.

Mattel surged to one of the biggest gains in the S&P 500 after reporting a bigger-than-expected profit for its latest quarter. Its stock leaped 23.2 percent.

Amazon.com dropped 1.6 percent after its CEO, Jeff Bezos, said he was the target of blackmail by the publisher of the National Enquirer, which he said threatened to publish revealing personal photos of him. The Enquirer’s publisher said Friday that it acted lawfully while reporting the story and will look into the claims.

President Donald Trump's announcement Thursday on the U.S.China trade conflict, in which he said he would not meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping before a cease-fire in their trade war expires next month, weighed on markets around the world, and indexes in Europe and Asia mostly fell.