By Caroline Valetkevitch
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks were flat on Friday after President Donald Trump instructed aides to proceed with tariffs on about $200 billion of Chinese products, while financial shares gained with bond yields.
A source familiar with the situation confirmed reports initially carried by both Bloomberg and Fox News on the moves by the White House. They came despite Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's attempts to restart talks with Beijing.
The S&P financial index <.SPSY> was up 0.6 percent. U.S. Treasury yields rose above 3 percent earlier in the day but were last off those levels.
"There are a lot of headlines that have come out here, people have been pretty active all week, and it's Friday afternoon. You don't really want to add additional risk when you don't know what news might hit over the weekend," said Michael O'Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading in Greenwich, Connecticut.
At the same time, the rate-sensitive S&P utilities index <.SPLRCU> was down 0.6 percent.
At 3:23PM ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average <.DJI> fell 2.97 points, or 0.01 percent, to 26,143.02, the S&P 500 <.SPX> lost 0.33 points, or 0.01 percent, to 2,903.85 and the Nasdaq Composite <.IXIC> dropped 2.96 points, or 0.04 percent, to 8,010.75.
Also weighing on utilities was NiSource
Walmart
Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.05-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.39-to-1 ratio favoured advancers.
The S&P 500 posted 49 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 117 new highs and 58 new lows.
(Reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Susan Thomas)
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content
