U.S. stocks shook off a midday stumble to finish slightly higher Friday, though the modest rebound couldn’t keep the S&P 500 from breaking its longest stretch of weekly gains in two years.
Banks, health care stocks and companies that rely on consumer spending powered much of the rebound, outweighing losses in technology, real estate and other sectors. Oil prices fell.
Markets around the world churned this week on uncertainty about whether the U.S. and China can soon halt their trade dispute, or at least stop it from escalating. New U.S. tariffs are set to hit Dec. 15 on many Chinese-made items on holiday shopping checklists, such as smartphones and laptops.
Tariffs already put in place have hurt manufacturing around the world, and businesses have held back on spending given all the uncertainty about where the rules of global trade will end up.
President Donald Trump said a deal between the world’s largest economies is “potentially very close” after Chinese President Xi Jinping said Beijing is working to “try not to have a trade war,” but will fight back if necessary.
Even with the run of selling this week, major indexes remained close to all-time highs they set during steady, six-week upward move. The benchmark S&P 500 ended the week within 0.4 percent of its record high set Monday.
“Investors are basically saying the market is overbought and they’ll wait to step back in after we see some sort of resetting of prices,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA.
The S&P 500 rose 6.75 points, or 0.2 percent, to 3,110.29. It had earlier been up 0.3 percent and then down 0.1 percent.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 109.33 points, or 0.4 percent, to 27,875.62. The Nasdaq composite added 13.67 points, or 0.2 percent, to 8,519.88.
Traders favored smaller company stocks, giving the Russell 2000 index a gain of 4.98 points, or 0.3 percent, to 1,588.94.
