NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks slipped in morning trading on Wall Street Friday but not enough to erase the market’s gains for the week.
The S&P 500 fell 0.5%. The benchmark index is on track for weekly gains that would help trim some of last week’s losses. Th Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 28 points, or 0.1%, to 34,876 as of 10:05 a.m. Eastern. The Nasdaq fell 0.9%,
Technology stocks were the biggest drag on the market. Microsoft fell 1.6% and chipmaker Nvidia fell 1.4%.
U.S. automaker stocks were proving to be resilient after members of the United Auto Workers union walked off the job at several plants overnight. Ford rose 1%, General Motors rose 1.8% and Stellantis gained 2%.
Bond yields were mixed. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.30% from 4.29% late Thursday. The yield on the 2-year Treasury fell to 5.01% from 5.02% late Thursday.
Investors spent much of the week reviewing mostly healthy updates on the U.S. economy. The reports came ahead of next week’s Federal Reserve meeting, where the central bank is expected to continue holding interest rates steady.
The central bank raised rates aggressively through 2022 and 2023 in an effort to tame inflation, but it maintained interest rate levels at its last meeting. Inflation has generally been easing back to the central bank’s target of 2%.
Boosting market sentiment this week was a report that said U.S. shoppers spent more at retailers last month than economists expected. That reflects a remarkably resilient job market, which has withstood a steep jump in interest rates.
A separate report Thursday morning said fewer workers applied for unemployment benefits last week than expected, which implies the number of layoffs remains low.
A third report said prices getting paid at the wholesale level rose more last month than economists expected. That could be a discouraging signal for households if the higher-than-expected inflation gets passed on to shoppers at the consumer level.
___
Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed to this report.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.