Stocks mixed in short trading day
Stocks finished mixed in post-holiday trading Friday as Wall Street meandered through a shortened session. The major indexes ended the week higher as investors looked forward to the results of the first weekend of holiday shopping and a key jobs report next week.
Wall Street struggled to continue its bullish streak, albeit in very light trading, as continued weakness in the dollar weighed on stocks. Reports that the Chinese central bank had sold off some of its U.S. Treasury notes due to the low dollar turned out to be unsubstantiated, boosting the dollar against the yen. The dollar reached another new low against the euro, however.
The trading day ended at 10 a.m. PST as part of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 1.92, or 0.02 percent, to 10,522.23.
Broader stock indicators were narrowly mixed. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was up 0.89, or 0.08 percent, at 1,182.65, while the Nasdaq composite index lost 0.57, or 0.03 percent, to 2,101.97.
The holiday-shortened trading week reflected lingering enthusiasm over Wall Street’s prospects for a continued year-end rally. The dollar’s weakness continued to weigh on the markets, however, keeping the week’s gains minimal. For the week, the Dow rose 0.62 percent, the S&P 500 gained 1.05 percent, and the Nasdaq was up 1.51 percent.
Investors already looked to next week for further news, hoping that consumer spending over the holidays would help revive the overall economy. The Labor Department is expected to release job creation figures next Friday that Wall Street hopes will show signs of stronger job growth.
“Traditionally, this is a pretty light trading day, but the people who are in the market really want to be here, and they’re coming in with a positive bias,” said Jack Caffrey, equities strategist at J.P. Morgan Private Bank. “Most everyone else will be looking ahead to next week to see how the retailers did this weekend and see how job growth will progress.”
Advancing issues outnumbered decliners by nearly 2 to 1 on the New York Stock Exchange, where consolidated volume came to 631.17 million shares, compared with 1.48 billion on Wednesday.
The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies was up 1.66, or 0.26 percent, at 631.16.
Overseas, Japan’s Nikkei stock average fell 0.61 percent. In Europe, Britain’s FTSE 100 was down 0.25 percent, France’s CAC-40 dropped 0.41 percent, and Germany’s DAX index lost 0.15 percent.