Friday's Stock Market Close: US Equities Finish Narrowly Mixed As Year-End Rally Runs Out Of Steam

U.S. stocks closed narrowly mixed in light trading on Friday as Nasdaq snapped an 11-day streak of gains but remained above the 9,000 level.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 24.34 points to 28,645.73 while the S&P 500 edged up 0.09 of a point to 3,240 and the Nasdaq Composite Index slipped 15.77 points to 9,006.62.

For the week, the Dow edged up 0.7%.

Year to date, the Dow has risen about 22.7%, the S&P 500 is up about 29.2% and Nasdaq has climbed almost 36%.

Volume on the New York Stock Exchange totaled 1.97 billion shares with 1,352 issues advancing, 200 setting new highs, and 1,590 declining, with 4 setting new lows.

Active movers were led by Rite Aid Corp. (RAD), Michaels Cos. Inc. (MIK) and Apple (AAPL).

Some market analysts were puzzled by stock movements amid a dearth of any concrete news.

“During what has been a very, very quiet week so far this week, the stock market has continued to rally in a slow and steady manner,” said Matthew Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak, on Friday. “Many important stock indexes breaking out ... but they’re also getting overbought.”

Similarly, Tom Essaye, a former Merrill Lynch trader and president of Sevens Report Research wrote: “There’s almost no identifiable news/events that would derail the rally over the next few days. [Still] all of the December gains have come on almost no material news -- and that should temper the optimism a bit.”

China’s National Bureau of Statistics on Friday said that Chinese industrial companies delivered 5.4% higher profits in November on a year-over- year basis after recording a 9.9% drop in October. However, through the first 11 months of 2019, China's industrial firms posted a 2.1% profit decline from the same period in the prior year.

The U.S. government sold a record $2.55 trillion in notes and bonds this year, a 26% jump from last year, after the Treasury Department auctioned its latest seven-year notes on Thursday. These securities had maturities ranging from two to 30 years.

Crude oil futures rose 0.03% at $61.70 per barrel and Brent crude slipped 0.03% at $66.85. Gold futures gained 0.02%.

The euro gained 0.66% at $1.1173 while the pound sterling rose 0.6% at $1.3075.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury dropped 1.63% to 1.874% while yield on the 30-year Treasury fell 1.11% to 2.311%.

Overnight in Asia, markets were mixed. Japan’s Nikkei-225 slipped 0.36% and China’s Shanghai Composite edged down 0.09% while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 1.3%.

In Europe all markets finished higher, with Britain’s FTSE-100 up 0.17%, Germany’s DAX rose 0.27% higher and France’s CAC-40 climbed 0.13%.