Stocks finish lower for fourth straight day

Benchmark stock indexes closed lower Friday after a morning effort at rebounding from a three-day losing streak.

The Dow Jones industrial average, Standard & Poor's 500 and Nasdaq composite index finished down for the week, minutes after President Obama completed his first press conference since March.

The Dow closed down 72.81 points, 0.5% to 15,425.51. The S&P 500 finished down 6.06 points, 0.4% to about 1,691.42. The tech-laden Nasdaq ended down 9.02 points, 0.3%, to 3,660.11. The 10-year Treasury yield closed at 2.58%, from just over 2.59% a day ago.

On Thursday, the Dow rose 0.2% to close at 15,498.32. The S&P 500 rose 0.4% to finish at 1,697.48. And the Nasdaq ended up 0.4% to 3,669.12.

Japan's Nikkei 225 index closed up 0.1% to 13,615.19 after an ugly week of declines as the yen picked up strength against the dollar. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index finished 0.7% higher to 21,807.56. Mainland China's Shanghai Composite benchmark gained 0.4% to close at 2,052.23.

In Europe, the UK's FTSE 100 gained 0.8% to end the week at 6,583.39, while Germany's DAX 30 index ended up 0.2% at 8,338.31, and France's CAC 40 index closed up 0.3% to 4,076.55.

The price of crude oil finished up $2.60 to $106 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange after economic data out of China suggested the economy might be on a stronger trajectory than estimated earlier.

Contributing: The Associated Press