The US markets ended mostly in red on Friday as major averages bounced back and forth across the unchanged lines over the course of the trading session. Initially stocks moved towards upside amid Thursday's upbeat U.S. economic data, which helped ease concerns about the impact of President Donald Trump's trade wars. However, buying interest waned as traders opted to book some profit after the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 reached new record intra-day highs. Further, traders paid no heed to a report from the University of Michigan showing a modest improvement by U.S. consumer sentiment in the month of July. The University of Michigan said its consumer sentiment index climbed to 61.8 in July after surging to 60.7 in June. Meanwhile, street had expected the index to rise to 61.5. With the slightly bigger than expected increase, the consumer sentiment index reached its highest level since hitting 64.7 in February.

On sectoral front, significant strength has been seen in Utilities stocks with the Dow Jones Utilities Average climbing by 1.6 percent to its best closing level in over seven months. Besides, considerable strength was visible among brokerage stocks, as reflected by the 1.3 percent gain posted by the NYSE Arca Securities Broker/Dealer Index.

Dow Jones Industrial fell 142.30 points or 0.32 percent to 44,342.19 and S&P 500 edged down 0.57 points or 0.01 to 6,296.79, while Nasdaq inched up 10.01 points or 0.05 percent to 20,895.66.