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Investing.com – Wall Street ended Monday off session lows, supported by strength in tech, but investor sentiment remained fragile amid worries companies are set to deliver a wave of gloomy earnings.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.4%, or 328 points, but was down as many as 624 points at the lows of the day. The S&P 500 lost 1%, while the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.48%.
With just a day to go until Wall Street banks kick off the first-quarter earnings season in earnest, investors appear to be bracing for earnings and guidance that will likely underscore the material impact to growth from the Covid-19 pandemic.
JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) and Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) get the first-quarter earnings season underway in earnings with results on Tuesday
Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Citigroup (NYSE:C) report on Wednesday, with Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) expected to report later this week.
The earnings arrive against a backdrop of growing optimism that some parts of the U.S. under lockdown may soon snap back into operation at a time when some Covid-19 hotspots like New York State are showing signs that the worst of the outbreak has passed.
“I think you can say the worst is over,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said, but he stressed lockdown measures, including social distancing, would need to continue to avoid jeopardizing the progress seen so far.
Intensive care unit admissions and the three-day hospitalization average continue to drop, Cuomo added, as total cases topped 195,000 and deaths passed the 10,000 mark.
The New York governor also joined several of his counterparts from New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Delaware to support the government’s plans to reopen the economy.
President Donald Trump said in a tweet Monday that the decision to restart the economy would be made “shortly”.
The losses in the broader market, meanwhile, were limited by a rise in tech stocks, led by a surge in Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) as investors bet the surge in consumers will not disappear after coronavirus pandemic is over.
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), meanwhile, surged 6% to close near all-time highs after Canaccord Genuity raised its price target on the stock to $2,600 from $2,500. The brokerage expects that higher margins in Amazon’s cloud business will help offset rising fulfillment costs as the e-commerce giant has seen a surge in demand for household essentials and groceries in the wake of the ongoing pandemic.
Energy stocks, meanwhile, were pressured by a fall from session highs in oil prices as investors shrugged off coordinated oil production cuts from major producers as the 10 million barrel per day cut agreement will not offset the coronavirus-led loss of demand of around 20 million bpd.
Industrials fell nearly 3%, paced by an 8.7% decline in Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT) after Bank of America downgraded the stock to underperform from neutral. The bank expressed worries the hit to the energy and mining sectors from the coronavirus would hurt the heavy-equipment maker’s results.
