By Yasin Ebrahim
Investing.com - Wall Street gave up gains on Friday, as Apple turned negative after announcing it would close some stores across the U.S. again following a rise in Covid-19 cases.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.21%, or 54 points, the S&P 500 fell 0.08%, while the Nasdaq Composite added 0.18%.
After hitting record highs intraday, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) fell 1% after announcing it would reclose 11 stores across the U.S. in Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Arizona following a rise in coronavirus cases.
The fall in Apple comes as Wall Street continued to express optimism on the tech giant ahead of the upcoming launch of its 5G iPhone.
"(F)undamentally speaking we view these temporary closures as having a negligible demand impact near-term," Wedbush said in a note.
The move from Apple exacerbated investor concerns that an ongoing rise in coronavirus cases could hamper the pace of economic reopening.
Several states including Arizona, California, Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma reported record daily surges this week.
Sectors of the market tied to the progress of the economic reopening, including financials and industrials, were shunned.
But energy, underpinned by a rise in oil prices, shrugged off worries about the hit to crude demand should states reimpose restrictions.
Oil settled more than 2% higher and notched a weekly win as OPEC and its allies ramped-up efforts to meet supply cuts.
In corporate news, meanwhile, Slack Technologies (NYSE:WORK) slipped 3% after Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) downgraded its rating on the company to sell from neutral, citing concerns over rising competition from Microsoft’s rival messaging platform, Teams.
The turn lower on Wall Street comes ahead of quadruple witching, when stock options, stock index futures, and index option contracts expire on the same day, usually triggering a strong bout of volatility as investors move out of old positions and take new ones.