Live Markets-US stocks dip, latest data is weak

Shortly after Friday's open, Wall Street indexes are working on ending the week on a positive note with the S&P 500 .SPX inching up in a bid to add to its Thursday record close, while the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC is edging closer to its June 2 milestone.

But nearly an hour into the mid-August trading day, all of the indexes had lost ground with the Nasdaq falling more than the S&P 500 and the Dow .DJI.

Traders are digging into their bets that the Federal Reserve would leave rates unchanged at its September meeting after the latest crop of data, although December showed a higher probability for a rate hike than for the status quo to continue, according to CME Group's FedWatch tool.

Energy .SPNY is up around 1.5%, leading the gainers among the S&P 500's 11 major sectors even as oil prices are barely higher.

Healthcare .SPXHC, down 0.8%, is the biggest percentage loser. Technology .SPLRCT is slightly red; however, it might still eke out a small weekly gain and is up about 24% year-to-date, which is second only to energy's roughly 38% gain.

In technology, shares of Applied Materials AMAT.O are falling more than 4% even after the company forecast fourth-quarter revenue above Wall Street expectations late on Thursday, with the idea that unabated demand for advanced AI chips will continue to fuel robust spending on its semiconductor manufacturing equipment. However, to put that in perspective, AMAT shares were still showing a yearly gain of around 99%.

This was after U.S. retail sales fell in July for the first time in nine months as the boost from big tax refunds faded, suggesting a marked slowdown in consumer spending at the start of the third quarter. The drop of 0.6% last month, after an unrevised 0.2% gain in June, was the first since last October and compared with economist expectations for an increase of 0.1%.