US equity markets retreated on Friday (20 October) as Middle East tensions and elevated US bond yields steered the benchmark indices to their largest weekly percentage declines since the week ending 22 September - Dow fell -287-points or -0.86%, logging a third straight session decline of more than >250-points and dipping into negative territory for the year. Intel Corp (down -2.10%) and Salesforce.com Inc (-2.20%) both fell over >2%. However, Merck & Co Inc rallied +2.23% after it signed a US$5.5B deal with Daiichi Sankyo for the rights to jointly develop and commercialise three of the Japanese company's candidate cancer drugs.