New York:Wall Street stocks moved cautiously on Friday in the shadow of a tense Group of Seven meeting in Canada amid trade conflicts, finishing a choppy session slightly higher.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.3 percent to 25,316.53.
The broad-based S&P 500 also advanced 0.3 percent to 2,779.03, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index edged up 0.1 percent to 7,645.51.
A two-day G7 meeting opened in Canada that has earned the unofficial “G6 plus one” moniker following a series of aggressive trade actions by President Donald Trump that have angered allies.
Trump threw an additional curveball at the group early Friday when he called for Russia to be readmitted into the group.
“The G7 is usually neutral to the markets, but now there are concerns that perhaps the trade talks will deteriorate,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial. “It adds some caution to the market.”
In recent weeks worries about a trade war have been offset by a string of largely positive US economic data.
Krosby attributed Friday’s mixed trading also to next week’s calendar, which includes meetings of the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank.
“Next week is a very important week,” she said.
Among individual companies, Apple, the world’s biggest company by market capitalization, fell 0.9 percent following an article in Nikkei Asian Review that said the tech giant told suppliers to expect lower smartphone shipments in the second half of 2018 compared with last year’s orders.
Procter & Gamble jumped 1.9 percent following a report by Bernstein that suggested the company should be broken up.
AFP