The S&P 500 was little changed for the week after Friday’s stock plunge triggered by worries over corporate earnings, Spain’s wobbling banking system and the U.S. fiscal cliff.
The large-cap index was up 0.4% for the week in afternoon trading Friday while the Dow rose a slight 0.2% but the Nasdaq Composite shed 1.2%. [Google Earnings Snafu Adds to Tech ETFs’ Woes]
The Dow fell about 200 points in afternoon action on the 25th anniversary of the 1987 Black Monday crash. [Stock ETFs Battle Resistance]
“It does seem we are in this range-bound area, still up near the highs, which is good, but these earnings better start coming in better or we will be in for more pain,” Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer’s Investment Research, told Reuters.
Despite Friday’s sell-off, bulls took some solace in the strong performance of riskier ETFs tracking U.S. homebuilder stocks and troubled European countries this week. [Builder ETFs Try Another Breakout]
For example, Global X FTSE Greece 20 (NYSEArca: GREK) gained 10.4% on the week while iShares MSCI Spain (NYSEArca: EWP) rallied 4.5%.