By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets opened flat on Friday as investors drew in their horns ahead of the second-quarter earnings season, which starts in earnest next week.
By 9:35 AM ET (1335 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 11 points or less than 0.1% at 25,695 points. The S&P 500 was also down less than 0.1% and the Nasdaq Composite, which retreated on Thursday from the record highs posted earlier in the week, was down another 0.4%.
Concerns about the relentless rise in new coronavirus cases was held in check partly by an announcement from Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ:GILD) that preliminary results from tests of its experimental drug Remdesivir associated it with a 62% drop in mortality in Covid-19 patients. While that's still not a silver bullet, it adds to the body of evidence showing progress by the healthcare sector in researching treatments for the coronavirus. Gilead stock opened up 2.3% but is still well below the highs it posted in the spring on the initial hopes for remdesivir.