U.S. stocks staged a mixed finish Friday, with the S&P 500 ending at another record, as investors tracked the standoff in Ukraine and after February's jobs report indicated the harsh winter could be the culprit behind recent weakness in economic data.
"The job market's in good shape, but there's not a lot of reaction, because that's pretty much what people were thinking before the report. What we've seen the last couple of months is the bond market reacting as though the underlying economy was weak, and the stock market was discounting weak economic data, so yields had fallen while stocks had moved higher. We all knew the views would reconcile," said Kate Warne, market strategist at Edward Jones.
Now, "the bond market is coming around to agreeing that this weakness we saw really really was due to the weather," Warne added of benchmark yields on Friday spiking to their highest since January.
Also "weighing on the market is the fact it's a Friday, and we've had a very nice run over the last couple of weeks, and world tensions, or the Ukraine situation, is still stirring, so to speak, so it's not surprising to see some people take profits," said JJ Kinahan, chief strategist at TD Ameritrade.
Recent developments on Ukraine had Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissing a warning from President Barack Obama over Russia's move into Crimea, with Putin saying he could not overlook calls for help from Russian speakers in Ukraine.
"The market is vulnerable to selloffs on any piece of news," Elliot Spar, market strategist at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., wrote in afternoon commentary. Selling was exacerbated by "news hit that Russia wants to get paid $2 billion that is owed to them by Ukraine for natural gas already delivered or supplies may be cut," said Spar of the Bloomberg News report.
Major U.S. Indexes
After rising 83 points and falling 23, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 30.83 points, or 0.2 percent, to 16,452.72, up 0.8 percent for the week, its second consecutive weekly gain.
Climbing to an intraday record of 1,883.57, the added 1.01 point, or nearly 0.1 percent, to record close of 1,878.04, with materials hardest hit and financials the best performing of its 10 major sectors. It rose 1 percent for the week, its second straight weekly rise.
Up for a fifth consecutive week, the Nasdaq fell 15.9 points, or 0.4 percent, to 4,336.22, up 0.7 percent from the week-ago close.
Decliners ran just ahead of advancers on the New York Stock Exchange, where nearly 724 million shares traded. Composite volume neared 3.6 billion.
Figures from the Labor Department had the economy adding 175,000 jobs last month, following an upwardly revised 129,000 increase in January. The unemployment rate unexpectedly rose to 6.7 percent.
"This week we've seen lots of economic data, much of it has been better than expected, which is not only supportive of the Fed continuing to taper, but also reassuring in supporting the higher stock-market prices we've seen," said Warne at Edward Jones.
(Read: Job creation accelerates in February)
"We beat a report where the excuse was already readily built in, so that was nice, and the last two months got moved up, which people were looking at. Plus, the average hourly wages going up 9 cents an hour was a really good thing, and makes the retail sales report more important," said Kinahan, referring to data coming next Thursday from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield, down 1 basis point at 2.787 percent before the payrolls report, shot up 7 basis points in its wake, to 2.81 percent, its highest since January. It more recently stood at 2.792 percent.
What the jobs report means for bonds "is likely an orderly move towards higher rates, because while it looks like we are returning to a more favorable growth pattern, it isn't likely to be strong enough to generate measurable inflation," Kevin Giddis, head of fixed income capital markets at Raymond James.
(Read: Jobs report signals higher interest rates ahead)
The dollar gained, along with the price of crude, with oil futures for April delivery up $1.02, or 1 percent, at $102.58 a barrel. Gold futures fell $13.60, or 1 percent, to $1,338.20 an ounce.
On Thursday, stocks mostly rose, lifting the S&P 500 to another record, with data showing jobless claims falling to a three-month low.
(Read: Wall Street's bar for Friday's payroll report set low)
—By CNBC's Kate Gibson