US Stocks Flat As Market Eyes G20 Talks

NEW YORK, , (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 17th Mar, 2017 ) : Wall Street stocks treaded water early Friday as the market eyed the G20 meeting in Germany where trade and the risks of protectionism are key topics in focus.

The two-day meeting of finance ministers and central bankers from major economies in Baden-Baden, Germany comes as President Donald Trump's tough talk on trade has sparked worries of a trade war with other large economies.

The G20 meeting coincides with the first meeting between Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House, which was postponed due to a late season snowstorm in Washington. About 10 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 20,944.

73, up 0.1 percent.

The broad-based S&P 500 was up a hair at 2,382.31, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index fell slightly to 5,899.07. US stocks still sit near record highs, but analysts see no obvious catalysts on the horizon to push the market in either direction.

Tiffany rose 3.1 percent after reporting a three percent decline in fourth-quarter net income to $158 million that translated into $1.45 per share, beating expectations by seven cents. Adobe Systems jumped 6.1 percent as it reported a 36.3 percent rise in first-quarter earnings to $398.4 million on record revenues thanks to growth in cloud-oriented software.