By Yasin Ebrahim
Investing.com – The Dow clawed back some its losses on Monday as energy stocks moved off session lows, despite the steepest decline in oil prices in more than two decades.
Dow fell 1.2%, or 285 points, after falling by as many as 507 points intraday. The S&P 500 slipped 0.8% and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.1%.
Energy stocks fell 1%, but had been down more than 6% after oil prices for May delivery slumped to a more-than-21-year low, as the coronavirus-led hit to demand and a glut in crude supplies weighed on sentiment.
"The extreme oversupply situation now in April and expected into May is creating huge dislocations for the May 2020 WTI NYMEX contract today in low traded volumes," said Rystad's Bjornar Tonhaugen according to the Wall Street Journal. "There is probably a squeeze happening right now, while the remaining 21M bbls of Cushing storage is likely to be filled up into May 2020 at the current pace of stock builds."
Corporate earnings, meanwhile, continued to underscore the impact from the coronavirus, which has killed about 168,000 and infected nearly 2.5 million worldwide.
United Airlines (NASDAQ:UAL) dropped 3% after reporting a $2.1 billion loss in the first quarter as revenue fell 17% to $8.0 billion amid a plunge in travel due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In sharp contrast, stocks that are expected to benefit from the current lockdown measures continued to climb, with Roku (NASDAQ:ROKU), Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), and Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) rising 5.8%, 3.7% and 1.8% respectively.
The bounce off session lows in the broader market was also helped by a climb in healthcare stocks, thanks to a rally in Alexion Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ALXN), Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY) and Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT).
Reports that Congress is nearing a deal to replenish the $349 billion Paycheck Protection Program, whcih was launched last week to deliver fiscal support for small businesses in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, also helped sentiment.
In the ongoing battle against the Covid-19, New York state continued to release encouraging results as intubations fell by 32 compared with a 152 decline yesterday, while total hospitalizations were about flat compared with a total of 1384 a day earlier, according to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The Covid-19 curve in New York is "off of the plateau and now starting a descent," he added.