U.S. stocks were trading mixed Friday afternoon as investors weighed fresh data on producer prices and a reading on consumer sentiment. All three major equities indexes were heading for weekly losses as investors also considered inflation concerns ahead of the Federal Reserve’s policy meeting next week. How stocks are trading
The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
-0.26%
fell 85 points, or 0.3%, to 33,696.
The S&P 500
SPX,
-0.07%
edged down almost four points, or 0.1%, to around 3,960.
The Nasdaq Composite
COMP,
-0.58%
was up almost 5 points, or less than 0.1%, at about 11,087.
What’s driving markets U.S. stocks were trading mixed Friday afternoon but on pace for weekly losses as investors assessed wholesale-inflation and consumer-sentiment data.
All three major benchmarks were down for the week, on track to snap two straight weeks of gains, according to FactSet data. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was heading for a weekly decline of 2.1%, while the S&P 500 was heading for a 2.8% drop and the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite was on pace to fall around 3.3%, FactSet data showed, at last check. “Last week’s rally was overdone, and I think we’ve spent this week largely giving it back,” said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, in a phone interview Friday. “The market recognized that it overshot last week in response to” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s Nov. 30 remarks at the Brookings Institution, where he indicated the Fed may slow the pace of its interest-rate hikes at its policy meeting this month, said Sosnick. Equities trading has been choppy Friday after the U.S. producer price index showed wholesale prices rose 0.3% in November, which was above the forecast from economists polled by The Wall Street Journal for a 0.2% gain. The pace of producer-price growth for October and September was also revised higher. “The market is doing its best to shrug it off,” said Sosnick. The month-over-month rise in wholesale inflation in November wasn’t so hot that “it’s going to freak the market out,” he said. Meanwhile, equities were encouraged by fresh data Friday from the Univ …