US STOCKS-Bang-up week on Wall Street ends with a whimper

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* Pence delays China speech amid "positive signs" on talks
* Energy sector gains as crude prices rise
* Indexes: Dow -0.13%, S&P 500 -0.13%, Nasdaq -0.24%

(Updates to close)
By Noel Randewich
June 21 (Reuters) - Wall Street edged lower on Friday, as
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence's decision to defer a speech on
China policy increased optimism on upcoming trade talks between
Washington and Beijing, while tensions between the United States
and Iran undercut sentiment.
The S&P 500 briefly hit a record high.
Pence called off a planned China speech that had been cast
initially as a sequel to a blistering broadside he delivered in
October, a move aimed at averting increasing tensions with
Beijing, a White House official said. The benchmark S&P 500 index .SPX hit an intraday record
high of 2,964.15, but then stepped back as the rising tensions
between the United States and Iran kept investors on edge.

Top for investors next week, U.S. President Donald Trump and
Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to restart trade talks
at the Group of 20 summit in Japan on June 28-29. "People will be focusing on what happens at the G20 with
Presidents Trump and Xi," said Kurt Brunner, portfolio manager
with the Swarthmore Group in Philadelphia. Any indication of
progress from Trump following the meeting would be positive for
Wall Street, he said.
Stocks logged a third straight week of gains after posting
their worst monthly performance this year in May on fears the
prolonged trade war would hit global economic growth.
Trump said on Friday he aborted a military strike on Iran in
response to Teheran's downing of a U.S. drone but
the possibility of a U.S. retaliation pushed crude prices higher
and helped lift the energy sector .SPNY by 0.82%. O/R
The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI dipped 0.13% to end
at 26,719.13 points, while the S&P 500 .SPX lost 0.13% to
2,950.46. The Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 0.24% to
8,031.71.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq was weighed down by a 2.2% fall in
PayPal Holdings Inc PYPL.O after the digital payments company
said its chief operating officer, Bill Ready, would step down.
For the week, the S&P 500 climbed 2.20%, the Dow added 2.41%
and the Nasdaq rose 3.02%.
During Friday's session, CarMax Inc KMX.N rose as much as
3.2% to a record high after the used-vehicles retailer posted
quarterly results above analysts' expectations.
Carnival Corp CCL.N fell for a second day, down 4.4%, and
among the biggest decliners. Several brokerages trimmed their
share price targets after the cruise operator cut its 2019
profit forecast.
Reflecting "quadruple witching," as investors unwind
interests in futures and options contracts prior to expiration,
volume on U.S. exchanges hit 8.6 billion shares, compared with
the 7.0 billion-share average for the full session over the last
20 trading days.
Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a
1.63-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.63-to-1 ratio favored decliners.
The S&P 500 posted 48 new 52-week highs and 2 new lows; the
Nasdaq Composite recorded 64 new highs and 65 new lows.