Wall Street closes down as Nike's gains stand out

Wall Street stocks ended the day in negative territory on Friday, putting the major indices down for the week as oil stocks joined Wal-Mart Stores in retreating from recent gains.

But sports footwear and apparel giant Nike Inc saw shares up 3 percent, making it one of the Dow's biggest gainers.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 0.2 percent at 18,552.57.

The broader S&P 500 was down 0.1 percent at 2,183.87 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq was essentially flat at 5,238.38.

"The market continues to exhibit sideways price action but it is still an upside bias. The market just can't just sell off with any bad news," Michael James of Wedbush Securities told AFP.

"None of the economic data was really market moving, nor were the Fed comments from the last meeting. They had no impact," he added.

Oil stocks were in negative territory on the Dow, with supermajor Exxon Mobil Corp down 1.3 percent and Chevron 1.2 percent.

Wal-Mart shares gave up all of Thursday's gain which came after the retailer posted better-than-expected earnings, despite absorbing costs from its recent acquisition of the online retailer Jet.com.

On Friday the company closed down 2 percent at $72.81.

Nike surged after announcing it had formed a supply-chain partnership with private equity firm Apollo Global Management LLC. The deal could help the retailer surmount logistics problems.