Wall Street ends flat ahead of long weekend

NEW YORK, Jan 16 (Reuters) – U.S. stocks ended nearly flat on Friday in a choppy session ahead of the long weekend, although all three major indexes posted losses for the week as fourth-quarter earnings season kicked off.

Shares of chipmakers rose, with an index of semiconductors extending gains from Thursday.

Big U.S. banks posted mostly solid results this week as the S&P 500 reporting period got underway. Still, shares of banks and other financial institutions have been pressured by worries over U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed one-year cap on credit card interest rates at 10%. Financials were down for the week.

Investors also digested news that Trump said he may want to keep economic adviser Kevin Hassett in his current role, lowering market bets that Hassett would succeed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

“To finish the week around flat with the S&P 500 still within spitting distance of 7,000 – most investors will take that as a win two weeks into the year,” said Anthony Saglimbene, chief market strategist at Ameriprise Financial.

“One of the other reasons markets have been flat-lining is we’re at the start of the earnings season,” he said. “Bank earnings are showing a generally favorable economic and business backdrop. Now we’re going to start seeing other companies tied to other sectors, and that’s going to give us a better take on fundamental conditions.”

According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 lost 5.01 points, or 0.07%, to end at 6,939.46 points, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 15.60 points, or 0.07%, to 23,514.42. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 87.13 points, or 0.18%, to 49,355.31.

The earnings season ramps up next week with reports from heavyweights including Netflix, Johnson & Johnson and Intel.

Investors were also cautious of making big bets ahead of the long weekend, with the stock market shut on Monday for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

While stocks have largely traded in a relatively tight range in recent sessions, some options market participants expect more choppy price action in coming days following Friday’s monthly options expiration.

“Historically the middle part of January tends to be pretty choppy,” said Bruce Zaro, managing director at Granite Wealth Management in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

“Once we work our way through that, then we are likely to see a little bit better performance out to the end of the month. Hopefully, we’ll find the month positive,” which could suggest positive performance for the year, Zaro said.

The week also saw money shifting out of some heavyweight tech names into more undervalued areas, with mid-cap and small-cap stocks outpeforming the benchmark S&P 500.

(Additional reporting by Medha Singh and Pranav Kashyap in Bengaluru and Saqib Iqbal Ahmed in New York; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli, Maju Samuel and David Gregorio)