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The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped on Friday as investors awaited much-anticipated trade talks between U.S. and Chinese officials this weekend.

The S&P 500 inched down 0.07%, closing at 5,659.91. The Nasdaq Composite ended the session little changed, ending at 17,928.92. The 30-stock Dow lost 119.07 points, or 0.29%, and settled at 41,249.38.

Week to date, the S&P 500 slid about 0.5%, while the Nasdaq dropped roughly 0.3%. The Dow fell almost 0.2% in the period.

Wall Street is ending the week on a more cautious note, with stocks and bonds fluctuating as the world’s two largest economies get ready to kickstart their trade negotiations.

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 were little changed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 0.2%. Across the Atlantic, Germany’s DAX Index became the first major European gauge to surpass its March peak, recouping all declines sparked by Trump’s trade war.

Oil rose as algorithmic traders fled short positions amid renewed optimism about trade talks between the US and China this weekend.

West Texas Intermediate climbed 1.9% to settle near $61 a barrel, the highest in over a week, as the Trump administration weighs reducing levies on China to de-escalate tensions and temper the economic pain in both countries. The rally was limited by President Donald Trump’s comments that an 80% tariff on China “seems right.”

Citigroup Inc. strategists recommend betting on longer-term bonds to underperform, citing the risks of what they call an “expensive” fiscal bill.

Strategists led by Dirk Willer advised investors to position for spreads to widen between five- and 30-year rates via six-month forward contracts. They are targeting a move to 90 basis points, up from 40 basis points right now.

“We are moving from the tariff to the fiscal narrative, as President Trump has been focused on getting tax cuts on the book,” the strategists wrote in a May 8 note. The risk is that “the US curve will bear steepen aggressively again,” they wrote.

The Trump administration’s first trade talks involve an eclectic mix of major exporters and smaller economies, as the White House looks to rack up agreements that could serve as models for other negotiations.

President Donald Trump’s team has set a list of roughly 20 partners as the focus of early negotiations, people familiar with the matter said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Office of the US Trade Representative has briefed lawmakers on the targets, the people said.

The group includes nations such as Japan, South Korea and Vietnam, all top sources of US imports, where Trump wants to shrink the trade deficit. It also encompasses comparatively minor partners like Fiji, Lesotho and Mauritius, the people said.

With her new leadership role at OpenAI, Fidji Simo will be expected to bring to bear everything she’s learned about building customer loyalty and navigating internal drama.

Those who know Simo, 39, credit her intense ambition, political savvy and consumer instincts for her success in the industry. Simo climbed the ranks at Meta Platforms Inc. until she ran Facebook. Later, as chief executive officer of Instacart, she transformed the grocery delivery business from a money-losing startup to a growing, profitable public company.

A decade ago, when Microsoft Corp. was reined in by the Justice Department, a prominent Silicon Valley attorney popularised a theory about antitrust cases: “The trial is the remedy.”

The theory meant that forcing a monopolist to defend its conduct could open up space for other companies, particularly newcomers, to innovate in a market. And today, it’s happening with Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

Just as Microsoft is believed to have missed the technology world’s move to mobile platforms because it was so focused on its own monopoly case with the Justice Department, testimony and internal documents suggest Google may have fallen behind in adopting AI because of its own antitrust trial, which concluded in Washington Friday.

Senior European officials are in talks with the Trump administration to finalise an agreement on a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine that would impose new sanctions on Russia if President Vladimir Putin doesn’t budge, said people familiar with the matter.

The plans aren’t yet final, and moving forward still hinges on the US, which has called for a month-long unconditional truce and for Russia and Ukraine to both be held accountable for respecting the sanctity of direct negotiations.

“If the ceasefire is not respected, the US and its partners will impose further sanctions,” US President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post earlier this week.

President Donald Trump plans to nominate attorney Jonathan McKernan as the Treasury Department’s head of domestic finance, Secretary Scott Bessent announced in a statement Friday.

McKernan was previously nominated to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and sat for a Senate confirmation hearing for that role alongside other nominees earlier this year. He has been working as an adviser at the Treasury while awaiting confirmation, the department said. McKernan previously served at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Stocks traded lower Friday as investors await much-anticipated trade talks between U.S. and Chinese officials this weekend.

The S&P 500 edged lower by 0.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 113 points, or 0.3%. The Nasdaq Composite traded about 0.1% lower, meanwhile.

Top bankers from Citigroup Inc. and Barclays Plc who are underwriting new deals see investors ready to jump on risky debt, despite expectations of an economic slowdown.

“There’s a lot of liquidity in the bond market,” Citigroup’s head of debt capital markets, Richard Zogheb, said in a Bloomberg Television interview Friday. “You’ve got north of a $1 trillion in private credit, and well north, multiple trillions in fixed-income markets, the regular way fixed-income markets, that’s available to be invested.”

There’s a lot of money in short-term money markets that is ready to move into assets that are higher yielding, albeit more risky in an environment that many investors see as slowing, Zogheb said.

Yet the Federal Reserve is expected to cut rates further this year, with the market pricing in at least two cuts through the end of 2025. Fed funds futures last month were pricing in as much as four cuts.

Nestle USA is increasing prices for some chocolate products due to commodity costs, a sign that sweet treats will stay expensive for consumers in the near term.

The US division of Nestle SA, the world’s largest food company, will raise prices of its Toll House morsels, baking cocoa and fudge kits starting June 23, according to a memo viewed by Bloomberg News.

The hikes follow letters sent from the company at the end of last year to some of its commodity suppliers in which Nestle asked them to reduce prices, provide rebates and in some cases even cancel supply contracts altogether, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Some suppliers declined to do so, according to the people.

Delta Air Lines Inc. and Korean Air Lines Co. will spend $550 million acquiring a stake in Canadian carrier WestJet, adding to the broader consolidation among airlines globally.

The 25% stake is being sold by Onex Partners and affiliated funds and co-investors of the group, the parties said in a statement Friday. The Onex group will continue to own and control Calgary, Alberta-based WestJet.

As part of the deal, Delta will buy a 15% minority interest for $330 million while Korean Air will pay $220 million for a 10% stake. Delta will also have the right to sell and transfer a 2.3% share to its joint venture partner Air France-KLM for $50 million upon the deal closing.

It wasn’t that long ago that the pandemic snarled shipments of toilet paper the world over. Now, US President Donald Trump’s tariffs are threatening disruption once again.

Suzano SA is the world’s largest exporter of pulp — the raw material for products including bath tissue. The company has seen that export levies have led to a decline in shipments of the product from Brazil to the US, Chief Executive Officer João Alberto de Abreu said in an interview. The Sao Paulo-based company is now passing tariff costs on to US buyers, he added.

While it’s too early to tell how severely tariffs will shake up the paper supply chain, the impact on pulp is just the latest example of how trade spats threaten to upend the normal flow of global shipments for essential goods. Brazil’s exports of bleached hardwood pulp, the type produced by Suzano, to the US fell 20% from a year earlier in April, according to government data.

Wall Street is ending the week on a more cautious note, with stocks wiping out gains as the world’s two largest economies get ready to kickstart their trade negotiations.

Investors refrained from making riskier bets as speculation grew that while talks between Chinese and American officials could represent a diplomatic icebreaker, they are unlikely to result in a comprehensive agreement. Following a two-day advance, the S&P 500 retreated. Bonds edged higher, while the dollar halted a two-day rally.

Germany’s DAX Index became the first major European gauge to surpass its March peak, recouping all declines sparked by US President Donald Trump’s trade war.

The stock index ended up 0.6% at 23,499.32 — a record close. The pan-European Stoxx 600 Index advanced 0.4%. Stocks briefly trimmed gains Friday after Trump floated an 80% tariff on China ahead of negotiations this weekend, before largely recovering.

The DAX had previously slumped as much as 16% from its March record as Trump’s sweeping tariffs unleashed global market volatility. But the index has bounced as Washington took a softer tone on trade. Optimism around a German economic boom following the new government’s fiscal reforms has also driven demand for local stocks.Democratic senators, including Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen and Massachusetts’ Elizabeth Warren, are demanding answers from top federal officials about ties between crypto giant Binance and Trump family-related digital asset ventures.

In a letter sent Friday to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Attorney General Pam Bondi, the senators raised concerns about President Donald Trump’s connection to an exchange that was found guilty of violating US money laundering and sanction laws. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut also signed the letter.

The US Army delayed until next year a decision on whether to approve full production of a $2 billion Lockheed Martin Corp. air defense radar system that’s been touted as a candidate for the Trump administration’s proposed “Golden Dome” defense umbrella.

The Army said it had planned to make a full-rate production decision on Lockheed’s Sentinel A4 in October, but pushed that timeline back to between July and September 2026 to conduct more intense combat testing.

The Sentinel A4 is designed to replace an older model now part of the air defense network covering the US National Capital Region, including the White House, from rogue aircraft and cruise missiles. The Army said it expects to field the upgraded radar into the Washington-area air defense network after October 2026.

The U.S. has struck a trade agreement with the UK and relations seem to be thawing toward China, but the outlook may be more pessimistic for other countries, according to Goldman Sachs.

The firm’s economic research team, led by Jan Hatzius and Alec Phillips, said in a note to clients that the deal and Thursday’s comments on China pointed toward “de-escalation” but that may not be the case for every country.

“While we do not expect the ‘Liberation Day’ tariff rates to take effect at the end of the 90-day pause, it appears increasingly likely that some if not most trading partners will soon face a renewed threat that country-specific rates will take effect, and points to a higher chance that the US might impose those rates on at least a few trading partners,” the note said.

US prosecutors and regulators investigating a $32 million deal between CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. and a technology distributor are probing what senior company executives may have known about it and are examining other transactions made by the cybersecurity firm, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Lyft shares climbed 20% Friday after the ride-sharing company upped its share buyback plan and posted better-than-expected gross bookings.

During an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” CEO David Risher said that Lyft isn’t seeing “anything to worry about” despite widespread concerns of a slowing consumer amid ongoing economic uncertainty.

“Our team is stronger than it’s ever been, and the consumer demand is absolutely there,” he said.

Gross bookings grew 13% from a year ago to $4.16 billion, slightly beating a $4.15 billion estimate from StreetAccount. The company said the quarter was its 16th straight period of gross bookings growth.

Federal Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams said keeping inflation expectations anchored near policymakers’ target forms the “bedrock” of central banking.

A “critical lesson” for central bankers is “the importance of maintaining well-anchored inflation expectations, especially when uncertainty is very high,” Williams said at a conference in Reykjavik, Iceland.

US equity investors will be watching closely as trade talks kick off between the Trump administration and China, with trillions of dollars hanging in the balance for American companies.

The average member of the S&P 500 made 6.1% of its revenue from selling goods in China or to Chinese companies in 2024, according to an analysis from Bloomberg Intelligence’s Gillian Wolff and Gina Martin Adams.

Sun Life Financial Inc. beat analyst expectations in the first quarter, fueled by its asset management segment.

The Toronto-based insurance firm reported underlying earnings of C$1.82 per share, better than the C$1.71 predicted by analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Sun Life also raised its quarterly dividend to 88 Canadian cents from 84 cents.

Stocks gained Friday as President Donald Trump suggested many trade deals are near, while also endorsing cutting the tariff rate on China before weekend talks.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 111 points, or 0.3%. The S&P 500 advanced 0.4%, and the Nasdaq Composite traded 0.6% higher.

“Many Trade Deals in the hopper, all good (GREAT!) ones!,” said Trump on Truth Social, a day after announcing a preliminary trade agreement with the U.K., which is the first deal between the U.S. and a global trading partner since Trump’s “reciprocal” tariff announcement last month.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York plans on making early-settlement operations for a key liquidity facility part of the regular schedule in a bid to enhance its efficacy for monetary policy implementation and market functioning.

The scheduling tweak to the Standing Repo Facility — or SRF, which allows eligible banks and primary dealers to borrow funds overnight in exchange for Treasury and agency debt at a rate set by the Fed — will take place at some point “in the not-to-distant future,” said Roberto Perli, who oversees the central bank’s securities portfolio,

“Funding liquidity is more likely to remain plentiful if money market rates are not too volatile, which, in turn, depends on the availability and efficacy of monetary policy implementation tools for ensuring rate control within the Federal Reserve’s ample reserves framework,” he said Friday at the Eighth Conference on Short-Term Funding Markets in Washington.

Canada’s tepid pace of job creation last month sent the unemployment rate soaring back to a level last seen in November, the highest since January 2017 outside of the pandemic.

Employment grew by just 7,400 positions in April, and the jobless rate rose 0.2 percentage points to 6.9%, Statistics Canada data showed Friday. The median projection in a Bloomberg survey of economists saw similar numbers of jobs added but anticipated unemployment to increase by a smaller magnitude.

April is the third month in a row where the Canadian economy either saw very little change in employment or job losses, underscoring a slowdown in hiring or downsizing amid trade uncertainty. It’s also the first month where the tariff impact on export-dependent jobs in auto, steel, aluminum and other sectors become more evident.

Oil rose as the market turned its attention to trade talks between the US and China this weekend, after President Donald Trump announced an agreement with the UK.

Brent surpassed $64 a barrel, dipping briefly from session highs after President Trump posted on social media that an 80% tariff on China “seems right”. His administration is weighing a reduction of levies on China to de-escalate tensions and temper the economic pain both countries are already starting to feel.

Crude has tumbled from a mid-January peak on concerns the trade war will dent economic growth, while OPEC+ moved to revive idled production. Measured optimism on the negotiations has helped prices recover some ground after starting the week near their lowest since 2021. There have also been positive signs in fuel markets — one gauge of strength in gasoline is the strongest in about six months.

European leaders presented a united front in the US trade war on Friday, with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz saying individual member states won’t strike side deals and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen indicating that a concrete proposal is needed for any serious talks with Washington.

The comments underscore the EU’s strategy to stay together and speak with one voice as US President Donald Trump uses the threat of steep tariff hikes to persuade countries to sign bilateral trade deals that would be advantageous to the US. While Trump hailed such a pact with the UK this week as a breakthrough that would open the door to others, there’s been little progress with the EU, which is planning to strike back with counter-tariffs if no compromise can be reached.NewsLive TVMarketPopular CategoriesCalculatorsTrending NowLet's Connect with CNBCTV 18Network 18 Group :©TV18 Broadcast Limited. All rights reserved.