Stocks mixed as worldwide rally takes a pause

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 big picture is, it’s still a pretty friendly environment for stocks,” said David Lefkowitz, head of Americas equities at UBS Global Wealth Management. “The pandemic will wind down, you’ll see a surge in corporate profits this year and the Fed made very clear they’re not going to take the punch bowl away anytime soon.”

The S&P 500 slipped 11.60 points to 3,841.47. The index was coming off two straight alltime highs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 179.03 points, or 0.6%, to 30,996.98. The Nasdaq inched up 12.15 points, or 0.1%, to 13,543.06. The Russell 2000 added 27.34 points, or 1.3%, to 2,168.76.

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