On The Fly: Top stock stories for Friday

U.S. stocks opened higher only to later trade broadly lower on Friday after plunging on Thursday amid fears of a U.S.-China trade war. As part of the broad decline, the Dow lost over 400 points. After tweeting that he was considering a veto to the proposed omnibus spending bill, which was passed by Congress, U.S. president Trump announcing the signing of the bill, noting that he was unhappy with a lot of what was in it. ECONOMIC EVENTS: The Commerce Department said that orders for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft jumped 1.8% in February, the biggest gain in five months and followed a downwardly revised 0.4% decrease in January. Shipments of core capital goods increased 1.4% in February, following an upwardedly revised 0.1% gain in January. Purchases of newly built single-family homes-a relatively small slice of all U.S. home sales-decreased 0.6% from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 618,000 in February, the Commerce Department said. In energy news, Baker Hughes reported that the U.S. rig count is up 5 rigs from last week to 995. In White House news, President Trump signed the $1.3T spending bill despite threatening to veto the bill earlier in a tweet. Adding to the potential trade war saga, Bloomberg reported that Cui Tiankai, China's ambassador to the U.S., signaled that China could reduce purchases of U.S. Treasuries in response to tariffs imposed by the president. COMPANY NEWS: Wynn Resorts (WYNN) said that that former CEO Steve Wynn no longer holds a stake in the company after he agreed to sell all his remaining 8M shares in privately negotiated transactions. The company also announced it was selling 5.3M shares to Macau casino operator Galaxy Entertainment Group at $175 per share... GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) confirmed it has withdrawn from the process relating to Pfizer's (PFE) Consumer Healthcare business. Earlier this week, Reckitt Benckiser (RBGLY) also pulled out of the bidding for Pfizer's Consumer Healthcare unit. Pfizer said it is continuing to evaluate options for its consumer health-care unit, but has not yet made a decision on a sale, spinoff, or other transaction... Target (TGT) and Kroger (KR) are discussing a possible merger, Fast Company's Ruth Reader reported, citing "several people with knowledge of the matter." A source close to the matter told CNBC, however, that there is "no truth" to the Fast Company report... Meanwhile, leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter today to Facebook (FB) CEO Zuckerberg detailing their "concerns with Facebook's use and protection of user data and requesting that he testify before the committee"... On the IPO front, Dropbox (DBX) opened for trade on the Nasdaq today at $29 per share after pricing its initial public offering at $21 per share. MAJOR MOVERS: Among the noteworthy gainers was Nike (NKE), which rose fractionally after the company reported better than expected quarterly results and provided revenue growth guidance for the fourth quarter and fiscal 2019. Also higher was At Home Group (HOME), which gained 18.8% after reporting quarterly results. Among the notable losers was Glaukos (GKOS), which slipped 13.9% after its iStent abstracts showed little differentiation to competition. Also lower was Ferroglobe (GSM), which fell 23.7% after the U.S. International Trade Commission said it "made negative determinations" in its final phase antidumping and countervailing duty investigations concerning Silicon Metal from Australia, Brazil, Kazakhstan, and Norway. INDEXES: The Dow fell 424.69, or 1.77%, to 23,533.20, the Nasdaq lost 174.01, or 2.43%, to 6,992.67, and the S&P 500 declined 55.43, or 2.10%, to 2,588.26.