24/7 Wall St.

Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) regained its place last week as the top-performing Dow Jones industrial stock for the year to date. The company’s shares added nearly 2.6% during the week to muster a 19.1% gain since the beginning of the year.

The second-best performer among the Dow 30 so far this year is Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC), which is up about 15.9%. That is followed by Nike Inc. (NYSE: NKE), up 14%, Visa Inc. (NYSE: V), up 14%, and Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), up 12.8%. Of the 30 stocks comprising the index, only 12 have posted year-to-date gains as of Friday’s close.

The Dow dropped 116.08 points over the course of the last week to close at 24,715.09, down about 0.4% for the week. For the year to date, the tech sector has added 9%, best among the 10 market sectors.

The week got off to a somewhat mixed start when the World Trade Organization (WTO) issued a decision in 14-year long trade case Boeing launched against Airbus for illegal subsidies. Boeing claimed victory and said the federal government should now impose duties totaling into the billions on Airbus jets imported into the country. Airbus claimed a partial victory and said that any penalties it has to pay would be small. An Airbus complaint about Boeing subsidies is still pending with the WTO. A decision is expected this year.

The stock price jumped on Friday as traders and investors began to digest China’s offer to reduce its trade surplus with the United States by $200 billion by the end of 2020. This would be good news for Boeing along with other industrial stocks like Caterpillar, Deere and GE, presumably because the Chinese would not impose duties on these expensive goods. There are plenty of issues to sort out, not least of which is how U.S. industries can ramp up in time to cut the trade deficit with China nearly in half.

One final note: Reuters, citing unnamed sources, reported Friday that Airbus had failed in its attempt to woo United Continental away from Boeing’s 787 and to its A330neo. This should be no surprise because United was never going to add another aircraft model to its fleet unless the planes were free and so was the maintenance.

Boeing’s shares closed up about 2.1% Friday to $351.23, in a 52-week range of $182.52 to $371.60. The consensus 12-month price target on the stock is $387.29, and the forward price-earnings ratio is 21.04.