NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks ended slightly lower on Friday as escalating trade anxieties driven by U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest tariff threats against China offset a string of robust earnings led by Microsoft.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average posted its third consecutive weekly gain, while the S&P 500 also rose for a third straight week after eking out a gain for the period.
Shares of Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) hit a record high and ended the session up 1.8 percent on the heels of a strong second-quarter earnings beat. The company narrowed the race with Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Amazon.com (AMZN.O) in the race to be worth $1 trillion in market value.
Microsoft’s advance provided the biggest support to the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq.
Trump said he was ready to impose tariffs on all $500 billion of Chinese imports, the latest salvo in a series of protectionist moves that have prompted retaliatory measures from U.S. trading partners around the world.
“I think there’s a divided line on the Street,” said Robert Pavlik, chief investment strategist at SlateStone Wealth LLC in New York. “One side believes that (the trade dispute) is only going to lead to a global recession, where the other side believes that the president is trying to get the other side to negotiate.”
Trump also repeated his criticism of planned interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, writing in a Twitter post that tightening U.S. monetary policy would diminish any U.S. trade advantage.
Long-dated U.S. government bond yields rose on worries that the president’s comments would encourage Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to slow the pace of rate hikes by the U.S. central bank, which could increase inflationary pressure.
