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Investing.com – Soaring oil prices helped Wall Street shake off harrowing layoff numbers Thursday and push the major indexes firmly into the green after a rocky open.
Crude prices jumped 20% after President Donald Trump tweeted he expect Saudi Arabia and Russia to cut production by at least 10 million barrels and possibly up to 15 million barrels per day. Whether that’s even obtainable with the full cooperation of OPEC+ is still unclear.
The Dow rose 0.9%, helped by energy components Chevron (NYSE:CVX) and Exxon (NYSE:XOM), both up more than 7%.
The S&P 500 rose 1.2% and the Nasdaq composite gained 0.9%.
The SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF (NYSE:XOP) rose 5.8%.
The mood was decidedly more bearish at the open as more evidence of the huge economic disruption of Covid-19 arrived.
Another 6.65 million people filed for unemployment benefits last week, over twice as many as the 3.3 million who claimed a week earlier (the number was revised up by 20,000). In all, 6% of the U.S. workforce have hit the jobless rolls in just two weeks.
Luckin Coffee (NASDAQ:LK) stock fell 71% after the Chinese coffee house chain said it had suspended its chief operating officer and withdrew its last two quarterly reports while it investigates suspicions of “misconduct”.
Short-seller Muddy Waters Research had called the stock a fraud in January after evaluating anonymous research that suggested the company’s sales were inflated.
Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX) stock rose 2.8% on the prospect of a major competitor in China leaving the market.
Zoom Video (NASDAQ:ZM) stock fell another 5.2% on growing concerns about its data privacy policy, and about its valuation, after an uncontrolled surge in demand on the back of the Covid-19-driven boom in working from home.
The company reported earlier that average daily users had soared to 200 million from a maximum of 10 million before the crisis. It didn’t break out how many of them were using the premium, paid-for service.
