U.S. stocks are drifting Friday as Wall Street heads toward the end of an unusually quiet week. The S&P 500 was mostly unchanged in afternoon trading and is on track for a dip of 0.4% for the week. This may be the first week in seven where the index at the heart of many 401(k) accounts moves by less than 1.

"Right now, we're not out of the woods. I don't think it's necessarily a 'pound the table' time to buy stocks per se," Brian Vendig, MJP chief investment officer, told Yahoo Finance in an interview on Friday morning. "In the short term, this volatility is not going away."

Wall Street's main indexes rose on Friday, marking their third straight day of gains, as investors assessed fresh comments from President Donald Trump regarding tariffs on China ahead of a key weekend meeting between the two countries.