Dow sets record again; mixed finish for stocks

Wall Street capped a milestonesetting week Friday with a mixed finish for the major U.S. stock indexes and the second alltime high in two days for the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

An afternoon selloff 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.

“When you have a big up week like we’ve had, we’re at alltime highs, for people to take a little bit of risk off the table going into the weekend isn’t a big surprise,” said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab.

The S&P 500 index dropped 1.08 points, or 0.04 percent, to 2,929.67, just under its latest alltime 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 its 10th weekly gain in 12 weeks.

Coming off Thursday’s recordsetting rally, trading was listless for much of Fri day. A couple of factors may have contributed to the market’s lateafternoon pullback.

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

Also, on 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 exchangetraded funds — called ETFs — and other funds that track the S&P 500’s sectors to make trades to reflect the new alignment of the index.

“There’s probably some selling going on in ETFs and mutual funds right now and also probably on Monday,” Frederick said.

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.