NEW YORK (AA) – The stock market opened lower on Friday as oil prices began falling once again.
The Dow Jones decreased 26 points to begin the day at 17,694 points. The S&P 500 decreased 2 points to open at 2,062, while the Nasdaq was flat at the beginning of the day at 4,737.
With the rising value of the American dollar against major currencies curtailing oil importing countries’ purchasing power, and OPEC’s announcement on Friday of its crude production increase in April, oil prices began to slide.
At the opening bell, the American benchmark West Texas Intermediate was down 0.7 percent to trade at $46.36 per barrel, and the International benchmark Brent crude declined 0.5 percent to reach $47.43 a barrel.
Meanwhile, producers’ price index rose 0.2 percent in April, compared to the previous month, but came in below expectations of a 0.3 percent increase.
However, retail sales rose 1.3 percent in April, better than the market expectation of a 0.8 percent increase. The increase in April marked the retail sales’ highest monthly increase since March 2015.
