New York---US stocks closed mostly lower Friday, ending a four-day winning streak, as the sheen came off the European Central Bank's stimulus announcement and profit taking set in.
But the Nasdaq held up for a gain, its mostly tech stocks pulled up in part by coffee chain Starbucks, which added 6.5 percent on quarterly earnings that matched expectations and the announcement of a new president and chief operating officer.
After advancing 1.5 percent Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended down 141.38 points (0.79 percent) at 17,672.60.
The S&P 500 lost 11.33 (0.55 percent) at 2,051.82.
But the Nasdaq Composite pushed higher, adding to Thursday's 1.8 percent gain another 7.48 points (0.16 percent) at 4,757.88.
After Thursday's strong buying, the air drifted out of the market's enthusiasm for the ECB stimulus, analysts said.
"There's sort of a hangover after yesterday's celebration. Some people decided to cash in some of the gains we saw," said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at Standard and Poor's Capital IQ.
Industrial giant General Electric led the Dow with a 0.8 percent rise after posting net income of $5.15 billion for the October-December quarter, a gain of 61 percent from a year ago.
Chevron led the Dow losers, down 1.9 percent.
Starbucks, struggling to find new avenues of growth, named Kevin Johnson, formerly the chief executive of networking company Juniper, to forge a path forward. Johnson has served on the Starbucks board since 2009.
Cloud storage firm Box soared 65.4 percent in its debut on the New York Stock Exchange, its $14 IPO price jumping to $23.15.
Google and Twitter, subject of rumors of a possible Google-led merger on Thursday that gave both 3 percent-plus gains, edged higher. Google was up 1.0 percent while Twitter added 0.9 percent.
Also in tech stocks, online property hub Zillow surged 8.2 percent on its report that 5,000 real estate professionals had signed up as "partners" for its Zillow Pro for Brokers website.
Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury fell to 1.82 percent from 1.90 percent Thursday, while the 30-year dropped to 2.39 percent from 2.47 percent. Bond prices and yields move inversely
AFP
