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NEW YORK— The S&P 500 dropped about 7% within the first few minutes of trading March 12, steep enough to trigger an automatic halt to trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Cantor Fitzgerald LP is recommending bearish trades on the U.S. transportation sector amid a deteriorating global trade landscape and worsening economic numbers.

Target Corp. jumped the most in more than two months as it followed up strong holiday sales with upbeat projections for the current year, distancing itself from the travails of mall-based department stores.

U.S. stocks ended virtually unchanged to cap the best quarterly advance in five years.

Publicly traded trucking firms have seen record-setting freight in the first half of this year but their stock prices have lagged as cautious investors pulled back from a long-running bull market and an industry that can’t find enough drivers to haul its loads.

NEW YORK — Stocks rose sharply on Wall Street on April 10 after Chinese President Xi Jinping said Beijing would reduce tariffs on imported cars and improve intellectual property protection, steps that could ease tensions with the United States.

The share prices of trucking companies have been on the upswing since mid-May, recouping some of the gains from the bustling start of the year that were lost during a weak spring. While carriers generally are trading higher than a year ago, investors are once again waiting for clarity on the state of the U.S. economy before they send stocks soaring — or plummeting.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average’s first record close in three months comes amid a market drawing increasingly bright lines between what it views as winners and losers in a Donald Trump presidency.

Truckers, rail operators and airlines — the groups represented in the Dow Jones Transportation Average — have done a U-turn since slumping to a two-year low Jan. 20, three weeks before broader market indexes bottomed.