U.S. stocks kicked off trade lower on Thursday and were on track to finish the holiday-shortened week in the red, with a third straight decline in sight, after a trio of bank stocks fell in the wake of their quarterly results. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 52 points, or 0.3%, at 20,546, the S&P 500 index was off 6 points, or 0.3%, at 2,339, while the Nasdaq Composite Index slipped 8 points, or 0.1%, at 5,828. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup , beat analysts’ expectations, but Wells Fargo , which is still suffering from its sales-practice scandal, disappointed on revenues, and billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said it reduced its stake in the San Francisco-based lender. Those banks all opened lower. Meanwhile, weekly jobless claims fell slightly in the latest week, dropping to 234,000, while a report on producer-prices fell 0.1% in March, though core PPI-which excludes food, energy, and trade-was up 0.1%. Thursday’s early trade follows a week of intensifying geopolitical worries, underscored by a strained relationship between Russia and the U.S. and mounting aggression in North Korea. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson described the Russia-U.S. relationship as at a “low point” in a news conference with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. President Donald Trump’s comments in an interview with The Wall Street Journal late Wednesday, where he said the U.S. dollar is “getting too strong,” also weighed on the market. Yields on the 10-year Treasury note [BX:TMUBMUSD10Y] at 2.24% were trading near multimonth lows. Financial markets will be closed in observance of Good Friday, however, a batch of data are slated for the day because it isn’t a federal holiday. Data include a reading of retail sales, and consumer prices for March.
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