Stocks staged a mixed finish on Friday, with the S&P 500 ending at another record, as investors had one eye on a better-than-expected February jobs report but the other on the standoff in Ukraine.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed unofficially 30 points higher and the S&P 500 added one point to end at 1,878.04. But the Nasdaq slipped 15 points.
"The market is vulnerable to selloffs on any piece of news," Elliot Spar, market strategist at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., wrote. Selling was exacerbated by news that Russia wants to get paid $2 billion that is owed by Ukraine for natural gas already delivered or supplies may be cut, he said of a news report.
Earlier, figures from the Labor Department said the economy added 175,000 jobs last month, following an upwardly revised 129,000 increase in January. The unemployment rate unexpectedly rose to 6.7 percent.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield, down 1 basis point at 2.726 percent before the jobs report, shot up 7 basis points afterwards, to 2.805 percent. The dollar gained, along with the price of crude. Gold futures fell.
Safeway shares dropped 2 percent as Wall Street considered possible antitrust issues to a bid from Cerberus Capital Management for the grocery-store operator.