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Investing.com — U.S. stock markets opened mostly lower on Friday on profit-taking after a week of solid gains, as many were content to book profits ahead of a potentially bearish briefing on China by President Donald Trump after the close.
By 9:38 AM ET (1338 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 100 points, or 0.4%, at 25,301 points. The S&P 500 was down 0.1% while the Nasdaq Composite outperformed with a 0.2% gain after a recent run of underperforming the more cyclical traditional indices.
After the close, Trump is expected to announce new U.S. measures to punish China for what the U.S. sees as the suppression of Hong Kong’s autonomy through the introduction of a new security law. Any such measures are bound to cause resentment in China, which views the issue as an internal one.
Data released earlier also kept bulls in check, underlining how difficult it will be to support private consumption against a backdrop of record unemployment. Personal spending fell 13.6% in April, even though personal incomes rose 10.5% with the assistance of massive benefit payments across the country. Cleveland Federal Reserve President Loretta Mester told Bloomberg in an interview that the evidence so far makes it hard to believe in a V-shaped recovery.
