Wall Street digested the latest signs President Trump's trade war could be entering a more conciliatory phase.

"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 drifted modestly lower before the opening bell as uncertainty over global trade seeps into the busiest week of earnings this quarter from major corporations, as well as a raft of economic indicators Futures for the S&P 500 dropped 0.