Will Friday's positive jobs numbers create an appetite for a rally into the close? David Darst, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, and Christian Thwaites, Sentinel Investments, weigh in.
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By msnbc.com news services
NEW YORK ? Stocks closed mixed on Friday, but Wall Street recorded its best week since early 2009.
Earlier in the trading day, stocks rose on news the U.S. unemployment rate fell to a 2-1/2 year low.?
But they booked profits against technical resistance and before key events in Europe next week, putting a lid on gains.?
According to preliminary calculations, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 0.61 points, or 0.01 percent, to 12,019.42. The Standard & Poor's 500 dipped 0.30 points, or 0.02 percent, to 1,244.28. The Nasdaq Composite added 0.73 points, or 0.03 percent, to 2,626.93.?
Recent U.S. economic data has heartened investors. U.S. companies stepped up hiring and the jobless rate dropped to 8.6 percent from 9 percent, further evidence the recovery was gaining momentum.?
The unemployment rate drop was "the single most surprising number in employment data this year," said Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at the ConvergEx Group in New York.?
The lowest estimate on a poll by Reuters of 67 economists was 8.9 percent.?
The S&P 500 came within striking distance of its 200-day moving average, an important technical level, and briefly turned positive for the year.?
Financial shares were the biggest gainers on the day with the S&P financial index up 2.3 percent. JPMorgan Chase gained 8 percent to $32.90.?
Traders are also setting up for next week's European Central Bank meeting and a European Union summit, expected to shed light on the plans to combat the escalating borrowing costs in euro zone countries and tackle the debt crisis.?
"There's an increasing expectation that when leaders meet next week they will have the framework of a resolution that will allow greater fiscal unity and some beginnings of a resolution to the European debt crisis," Colas said.?
He said traders were nonetheless cautious since expectations have been overblown before.?
"We've been led down the aisle so many times we're afraid the groom's not going to show up again," he said.?
The three major indexes were on track to post their largest weekly percentage advance since March 2009. Indexes had advanced more than 1 percent earlier in the day.?
"If you had a good week, there's a very strong temptation to take everything off of your portfolio and wait for the next drop down," Colas said.?
U.S.-listed shares of Research in Motion Ltd dropped 8.8 percent to $16.95 after the BlackBerry maker said it will record a pretax charge to write down the value of its poorly received PlayBook tablet computer.?
Google Inc rose 1.4 percent to $622.04 after the Wall Street Journal reported the Internet group was considering a service to help consumers shop online with one-day delivery service to cut the loss of Web traffic to Amazon.com Inc .?
Reuters contributed to this report.?
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