By Jesse Cohen
Investing.com - Stocks on Wall Street ended mostly flat on Friday, but still scored their best weekly performance in seven months as traders looked for further clarity around the presidential election results.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 66 points, or 0.2%, to close the day at 28,323, the S&P 500 ended the session down about 1 point at 3,509, while the Nasdaq Composite rose less than 0.1% to 11,895.
For the week, the Dow and S&P 500 climbed 6.9% and 7.3%, respectively, to post their biggest weekly gain since early April. The Nasdaq surged 9% over that time frame and also had its best one-week performance since April.
The S&P 500 also posted its biggest election week gain since 1932.
Democratic nominee Joe Biden is currently in the lead for the race to become the next president of the United States, with 253 electoral votes to President Donald Trump's 213, according to projections.
Biden maintained his advantage going into Saturday, but television networks held off from declaring a winner because the margins are still too close to call in the key battleground states that will determine the election winner.
Votes are still being counted in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona - where Biden currently leads -, as well as North Carolina - where Trump is ahead.
Investors will be watching ongoing election developments in the week ahead, as well as the record surge in coronavirus cases.
President Donald Trump has so far shown no sign of being ready to concede, making a series of repeated and unproven claims of electoral fraud, while his campaign pursues lawsuits in several states related to the ongoing vote counts.
Americans have been waiting longer than in any presidential election since 2000 to learn the winner, with counting slowed by a record number of mail-in ballots due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
U.S. Covid-19 infections surged by at least 129,600 on Friday, according to a Reuters tally, the third consecutive daily increase of more than 100,000 cases as a third wave of outbreaks spreads across the country.