After significant fluctuations, the S&P 500 ended Friday at the same level

The American stock market ended the last trading day of the month with a mixed result. The morning session was characterized by defensive sentiment and trade tensions after President Trump posted on social media, where he accused China of violating the preliminary trade agreement with the United States and added: “So much for MR. Nice Guy!“

This rhetoric drove the main indexes into negative territory, despite the publication of the personal income and expenses report for April, which pleased investors with lower inflation and steady growth in real disposable income.

The indexes reached session lows shortly after the start of lunch, when Bloomberg reported that the United States could impose additional sanctions on Chinese technology. The S&P 500 index fell to 5,843 points, which corresponded to a decrease of 1.2% for the day, but was able to return to the positive zone in the second half of the session.

This was facilitated by the “buy on decline“ strategy, which has repeatedly brought success since the local bottom on April 7, as well as the president‘s statement at a press conference in the Oval Office about a possible conversation with President Xi to resolve the situation.

This partially relieved tension ahead of the weekend and probably triggered purchases to cover short positions, which supported the market recovery. Although the shares of megacorporations did not show any obvious strength during the day, they played an important role in the recovery.

The Vanguard Mega–Cap Growth (MGK) ETF, which declined by 1.5% at the day‘s lows, ended the session with a loss of only 0.2%. There was no obvious strength in the market, with the exception of individual securities such as Ulta Beauty (ULTA 471.46, +49.67, +11.8%) and Costco (COST 1040.18, +31.44, +3.1%), reported profits.

Costco brought the consumer consumer goods sector (+1.2%) to the top of the day along with the utilities sector (+1.1%). The sectors of energy (-0.7%), consumer durables (-0.6%) and information technology (-0.4%) were among the outsiders.

NVIDIA shares (NVDA 135.13, -4.06, -2.9%) and the semiconductor sector came under increased selling pressure. The PHLX semiconductor index fell 2.1%, although, to be fair, it has gained 14.6% since the beginning of the month, ahead of the S&P 500 index (+6.2%), which showed the best monthly result since 2023.

Our American FTinvest 11 portfolio was mostly hovering around the zero mark today, remaining slightly above the market. As a result, the index closed the day with an increase of 0.11% to the level of 744.8.