US stocks finish lower, post weekly losses

US stock indices closed lower on Friday, due to concerns about the coronavirus crisis, in addition to US Treasury's move to suspend emergency aid programs.

The US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that his team is looking to end several support programs that were aimed at small and medium businesses.

Leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties resumed negotiations about the second Covid fiscal stimulus package.

The number of Covid-19 infections jumped in the US at a record pace, as data from Johns Hopkins University revealed that the average daily number of infections reached 165,000 recently.

The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and the German firm BioNTech announced on Wednesday that the recent data from the final phase of the clinical trials on their Covid-19 vaccine showed it was 95% effective.

This came a few days after Moderna announced that its coronavirus vaccine was more than 94.5% effective in preventing the disease.

To the oil market, WTI crude December futures rose 1% or 41 cents, and closed at $42.15 a barrel, with a weekly gain of 5%, after hitting a day high of $42.1 and a low of $41.5.

Brent January futures rose 1.7% or 76 cents, and closed at $44.96 a barrel, and posted 5.1% gains this week, with a high of $44.7 and a low of $44.05.

As for stocks, Dow Jones fell 0.7% or 219 points, and closed at 29,263, with a weekly loss of 0.7%, a day high of 29,470, and a low of 29,231.

Nasdaq fell 0.4% or 50 points to 11,855, and posted weekly losses of 0.2%, with a high of 11,953 and a low of 11,852.

S&P 500 fell 0.7% or 24 points to 3,557, with recorded a 0.8% weekly loss, after hitting a high of 3,581 and a low of 3,556.