NEW YORK, Sept 20 (Reuters) – U.S. stocks closed nearly unchanged on Friday, as investors paused buying after a strong rally in the prior session that was fueled by an upsized interest-rate cut by the Federal Reserve, while Nike’s gains helped nudge the Dow to a record.
After notching their biggest daily percentage gains since mid-August, major averages were subdued for most of the session, but managed to secure weekly gains of at least 1%.
Fellow Governor Michelle Bowman, however, maintained that a smaller Fed cut this week would have been preferred.
“The market is still trying to recalibrate because, yes, there were some market participants that may have expected 50 basis points but a lot of people didn’t,” said Sid Vaidya, U.S. chief wealth strategist at TD Wealth in New York.
“You have to be a little bit more selective and measured just because we are expecting growth to slow down a little bit and valuations, especially in large-cap growth, are a bit stretched so you want to be a bit selective.”
For the week, the S&P 500 gained 1.36%, the Nasdaq rose 1.49%, and the Dow climbed 1.62%.
Options and futures linked to stock indexes and individual stocks were set to expire simultaneously on Friday in an event known as “triple witching,” and helped lead to the heaviest trading-volume day of the year.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 1.66-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 1.87-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P 500 posted 32 new 52-week highs and one new low while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 114 new highs and 105 new lows.
Volume on U.S. exchanges was 19.97 billion shares, compared with the 11.48-billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.
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Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Rod Nickel
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.