Wall Street was little changed on Thursday as reports of a U.S.-China trade summit being delayed dampened optimism among investors.
Bloomberg reported that President Donald Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping are unlikely to meet before April, questioning how soon the two largest economies in the world will end their trade dispute.
"The situation with trade is causing indigestion for investors early on. The deeper concern that is starting to creep up is that there is no sense of urgency at this point," said Andre Bakhos, managing director at New Vines Capital LLC in Bernardsville, New Jersey.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 14 points to 0.06% by 9:36 AM ET (13:36 GMT), while the S&P 500 lost 2 points or 0.08% and tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite was down 2 points or 0.03%.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) was among the top gainers after the opening bell, rising 0.8% after Cowen initiated coverage with an outperform rating. General Electric (NYSE:GE) jumped 3.3% despite a downbeat forecast, while JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM) inched up 0.2%.
Boeing (NYSE:BA) recovered 0.4% even as the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration grounded its best-selling 737 Max 8, joining dozens of other countries who grounded the plane earlier in the week.
Elsewhere, Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) slumped 2.3% as it faced backlash from an outage on its site, along with Instagram. Brazilian mining company Vale SA ADR (NYSE:VALE) fell 1.3% as a court in Brazil ordered the re-arrest of 13 employees and contractors in their role over the collapse of a dam in the country.
In commodities, Gold futures declined 1.2% to $1,293.95 a troy ounce while crude oil rose 0.6% to $58.59 a barrel, not far from Wednesday’s 2019 high. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, gained 0.2% to 96.743.
-Reuters contributed to this report.
