New York Stock Exchange

Reuters

The Standard & Poor's 500 finished slightly higher on Friday to run its streak to six straight sessions, but activity was light and gains were slight as the market enters a seasonally slow period.
The Dow and the S&P 500 closed out their fifth straight week of gains, led once again by expectations for global central bank stimulus despite discouraging signs for growth like weak data from China.

Overall, the S&P has gained a scant 0.3 percent over the past three sessions, a sign that while investors aren't looking to cut positions, they're also reluctant to make robust moves above the three-month highs the S&P has been hovering around.
"It makes sense that we'd take a bit of a breather, but momentum has been strong, and the fact that we've held steady despite a lack of good news is a good sign the trend will continue," said Joe Bell, senior equity analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati.

Reuters reported that volume was incredibly light, with about 4.97 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, well below last year's daily average of 7.84 billion.
Going nowhere on Friday were shares of Manchester United in its trading debut. The stock closed at $14, same as the initial public offering price. The IPO garnered some attention because of the high profile of the U.K. football club, but trading volume diminished shortly after it opened for trading.

The stock priced well below its expected range on Thursday, valuing the British soccer club at $2.3 billion.
Yahoo shares fell 5.4 percent to $15.15 a day after it said it may reconsider what it does with the cash it gets from a multibillion-dollar sale of half of its stake in Alibaba Group. Yahoo previously promised to return most of the cash to shareholders.