Investing.com - The S&P 500 ended higher Friday, as President Donald Trump offered some hope on a quick resolution to the U.S.-China trade war, but a warning from Beijing that it's not above launching further countermeasures against Washington kept gains in check.
The S&P 500 gained 0.14%. The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.11% and Dow added 0.37%. But many have warned against reading too much into the bullish day on Wall Street as markets were thin heading into the Memorial Day weekend.
"If we made a deal, I could imagine Huawei being possibly included in some form or some part of it," Trump said, according to Reuters.
But Trump didn't completely shut the door on renewing restrictions on Huawei, saying the Chinese tech giant was "very dangerous" from a security standpoint.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Commerce Department rolled back some of the restrictions placed on Huawei for 90 days.
China also served up a mixed message on trade, with China's ambassador to the U.S., Cui Tiankai, telling Bloomberg News on Friday that while it continues to favor a trade deal with the U.S., it also stands ready to launch a response against Washington for its ban against Huawei.
"Trade is about mutual benefits, war is about mutual destruction. How can you put these two very different concepts in one term?" Cui said this morning.
In the ongoing trade war, some analysts are seemingly leaning more toward a China victory.
"There's little doubt left that Beijing will carefully orchestrate its retaliatory actions against the U.S., possibly targeting the agriculture industry, high tech and even Wall Street, causing corresponding hardship on U.S. investors and corporations, to make Washington blink first," Barclays (LON:BARC) said in a note.
Still, trade-sensitive industrials ended the day higher, with Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT) and Boeing (NYSE:BA), bellwethers of international trade, closing 0.5% and 1.2% higher, respectively.
Boeing was the Dow's biggest percentage gainer and biggest point gainer, contributing 29.5 points to the Dow's 95-point gain. Boeing's good day came even as Bloomberg reported the SEC launched a probe on whether the aircraft maker properly disclosed issues tied to the grounded 737 MAX jetliner, which was involved in two recent fatal crashes.
Beyond trade, energy stocks also boosted the broader market thanks to a 1.2% rise in U.S. oil prices, though that did little to stop WTI posting its biggest weekly slump of the year amid a rise in domestic inventories and sluggish global growth.
The positive turn in risk sentiment boosted the 10-Year Treasury yield to 2.324%, which helped banking stocks rack up gains.
JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) closed positive for the day.
In economic news, core durable goods orders fell more than expected in April, pointing to underlying weakness in manufacturing demand, raising fears of slowdown in the broader economy.
Top S&P 500 Gainers and Losers Today:
Total System Services (NYSE:TSS), Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU) and CenturyLink (NYSE:CTL) were among the top S&P 500 gainers for the session.
Foot Locker (NYSE:FL), Autodesk (NASDAQ:ADSK) and Baker Hughes (NYSE:BHGE) were among the worst S&P 500 performers of the session.