NEW YORK/LONDON: Global stocks were flat but still traded near record highs on Friday (Aug 15) as US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin held high-stakes talks in Alaska over Ukraine.
US Treasury bond prices fell across the board with markets anticipating a Federal Reserve interest rate cut.
The Dow hit an intra-day record high during the session, becoming the last of Wall Street’s main indexes to climb to a new peak this week. The benchmark S&P 500 and the Nasdaq dropped, dragged down mainly by technology, financials, industrials and utilities stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.08 percent, the S&P 500 fell 0.29 percent and the Nasdaq Composite fell 0.40 percent.
“This market continues to move higher and the story is just earnings and margins,” said Talley Leger, chief market strategist at The Wealth Consulting Group in New Jersey.
“The inflation numbers that we saw this week were mostly services and in a services-based economy like ours, this is good for profit margins.”
Data showed that US retail sales increased solidly in July, rising 0.5 percent from the prior month, after an unexpected spike in producer price data on Thursday renewed inflation concerns and pared market expectations for Federal Reserve rate cuts this year.
European shares touched a near five-month high before pulling back, as investors drew encouragement from a largely positive earnings season. The pan-European STOXX 600 index finished flat at 0.06 percent.
The MSCI All Country World Index consolidated recent gains. It was last flat at 951.70, just shy of the record level of 954.21 set on Wednesday.
