Stocks Steady After Drop Following Trump's Test

Wall Street’s major stock indexes fell on Friday after President Trump tested positive for the coronavirus, but the losses ended up milder than investors braced for early in the morning. The S&P 500 lost 1% after paring an earlier 1.7% drop. Still, most of the stocks in the index were higher, the AP reports, and the S&P 500 managed to close out its first winning week in the last five. Big technology stocks remained weak and were the main reason for the day’s loss. Treasury yields ticked higher, and smaller stocks were stronger than the rest of the market in a sign of optimism.

For the day, the S&P 500 fell 32.38 points to 3,348.42, the Dow dropped 134.09 points to 27,682.81, and the Nasdaq was down 251.49 to 11,075.02. For the week, all three were up. President Trump's positive test for the coronavirus raised a long list of questions, per the Wall Street Journal, as it has for the country. Among them is the result and fallout of the presidential campaign pitting Trump against former vice president Joe Biden. "It just creates a wider range of outcomes or changes the probabilities of the election,” said a portfolio manager for PineBridge Investments. "It injects a lot of uncertainty of how it plays out."

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