U.S. equity markets struggled to find a trend in early trading on Friday, with the opening of the quarterly earnings season fuelling concerns about the economic situation.

In late morning trading, the Dow Jones was down 0.5% at 37,522.4 points, while the Nasdaq Composite was down less than 0.1% at 14,980.5 points.522.4 points, while the Nasdaq Composite nibbled less than 0.1% to 14,980.5 points.

Both indices had opened the session higher, buoyed by a statistic that left the door open for Federal Reserve rate cuts this year.

Investors learned an hour before the opening that producer prices had fallen by 0.1% on a gross basis in December, even though they rose by 0.2% excluding food, energy and commercial services.

The trend was nevertheless weighed down by the contrasting results of the banking giants, which opened the quarterly publication ball in the morning.

While JPMorgan (+0.6%) reassured investors with solid fourth-quarter accounts, Citigroup (-0.9%) suffered a heavy loss of $1.8 billion due to heavy charges, and Wells Fargo (-2.7%) saw its provisions for bad debts climb.

Health insurance giant UnitedHealth, the Dow Jones index's largest percentage weighting, dropped more than 4% after its quarterly results were marked by soaring costs.

The oil market remains on an upward trend as tension in the Middle East escalated overnight with US and UK strikes against Houthi rebel installations in Yemen.

On the NYMEX, a barrel of US light crude gained 1.5% to $73.1, but was headed for a decline of around 1% over the week.

Reassuring inflation figures weighed on the dollar, with the euro climbing back above the 1.0970 mark, but also on the yield on ten-year Treasuries, which confirmed its decline below the 4% mark.

For the week as a whole, the Dow Jones index is currently up 0.2%, while the Nasdaq is up more than 3%.

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