Virus continues to drag down Wall Street
Apple, HP, Facebook among local stocks ending the day in red
It was a new week for Californians living with social distancing, and under the state’s shelter-at-home edict, but it was a case of same-old, same-old on Wall Street as shares of Apple, HP and Facebook all lost more ground as investors awaited Congress to pass a stimulus package to help alleviate the economic damage wrought by the coronavirus crisis.
Before the market opened, the Federal Reserve announced extensive new measures meant to support American businesses and calm the sentiment surrounding debt markets. Among the moves the Fed said it would soon launch will be a program to lend money directly to smalland-medium-sized businesses.
But the Fed’s efforts fell on deaf ears, as the inability for the Senate to pass an economic stimulus package weighed on investors’ sentiments all day, and led to the Dow Jones Industrial Average
falling 582.05 points, or 3%, to 18,591.93. The S&P 500 gave up almost 3%, to end the day at 2,237.40, and the Nasdaq Composite Index shed 0.3%, to finish at 6,860.67.
Some investment professionals said they don’t believe any of the efforts to prop up the economy will do much to put the brakes on the stock market’s recent slide.
“Unfortunately I don’t think the market is anywhere near done with its purge of all the speculative excess which led up to this point,” said Jeffrey Sica, Chief Executive of Circle Squared Alternative Investments. “My opinion is that the market has another 20 percent more to decline before I start pecking away at the market.”
Among Bay Area companies, Apple saw its shares fall by 2%, to close at $224.37, and HP shares gave up 2%, to finish at $13.70. Cisco Systems shares gave up almost 3%, to end the day at $34.60, and Facebook slipped by 1%, to close at $148.10 a share.
However, Tesla rose 1.6%, to $434.29. Tesla said last week it would suspend vehicle production at its Fremont plant at
the end of the day, Monday, as part of the ongoing shelter in place effort going on across California.
Netflix also had a good day, as its shares rose more than 8%, to $360.27. Analysts at Baird raised their rating on Netflix’s stock to outperform from neutral on the grounds that Netflix is likely to benefit from new subscriber growth as people remain indoors in the effort to contain the spread of coronavirus.
Gains also came from Intel, up more than 8%, to close at $49.58; AMD, which rose more than 5%, to $41.64, and Twitter, up by 3%, to end the day at $24.69 a share.