NEW YORK (Reuters) - Global investors gravitated toward safe-haven assets on Friday as worries about the world economy persisted, cutting short a two-day rebound in Wall Street stocks.
U.S. stock indexes seesawed, making it difficult to end one of the most brutal December selloffs in memory on a high note.
“Markets will likely remain treacherous in the New Year,” Marc Chandler, chief market strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex LLC, told clients.
After flirting with strong gains in the afternoon, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended down 76.42 points, or 0.33 percent, to 23,062.4, the S&P 500 lost 3.09 points, or 0.12 percent, to 2,485.74 and the Nasdaq Composite added 5.03 points, or 0.08 percent, to end at 6,584.52. [.N]
MSCI’s index of global equities gained 0.57 percent to bring the global benchmark to a weekly advance near 2 percent.
Markets swung wildly in a week shortened by the Christmas holiday, starting with Wall Street’s worst-ever Christmas Eve drop, pushing the S&P 500 to within a whisker of bear market territory.
But efforts at a late Santa Claus rally failed to salve investors after a year that brought gains for very few categories of financial assets, from stocks to bonds and commodities. The global MSCI index, the S&P 500, the Dow and the Nasdaq are each headed for their worst years since the 2008 financial crisis.
(GRAPHIC: Global markets in 2018 - tmsnrt.rs/2R8CUd7)
The dollar index dipped 0.14 percent, with the euro up 0.14 percent to $1.1445 and Japanese yen strengthening 0.75 percent against the greenback at 110.17 per dollar. The greenback is down 1 percent this month against a
