Dow is able to finish day with a slight gain
U.S. stocks climbed during a scattershot session Thursday as investors latched onto a recovery in oil prices and ignored another week of daunting jobless claims.
The Dow Jones industrial average drove more than 300 points up in the morning before paring its advance to 35 points, about 0.15 percent, to close at 23,511.69.
The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index and the tech-heavy Nasdaq ended nearly flat.
European markets were up the board for the second day in a row. The German DAX and British FTSE closed with 1 percent advances.
Japan’s Nikkei climbed 1.5 percent as oil shares found some footing, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.4 percent. Mumbai’s BSE Sensex continued its hot streak with a 1.5 percent rally.
About half of the 30 Dow blue chips were in the positive column, led by oil supermajors Chevron and ExxonMobil. Their share prices were up about 3 percent.
Oil prices were on a tear after a wild two-day slide early in the week sent the price for U.S. crude below zero — meaning sellers paid people to take the oil.
By Thursday, however, prices had rebounded 40 percent.
West Texas intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, was selling for about $17 a barrel, a gain of more than 20 percent over Wednesday. Brent crude, the global benchmark, was trading at $21.54 a barrel, about a 6 percent jump.
Oil prices remain woefully depressed and far below the $50 range most oil producers need to made a decent profit without consumers feeling gouged.
Crude prices have dropped more than 50 percent since Januacross ary because of an oversupply brought on by a drop in demand from the coronavirus pandemic.
A price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia also flooded the oil market, driving prices down further.
So much oil is sloshing around that supertankers are doubling as oil storage tanks, floating offshore waiting to disgorge their product.
Stocks were positive most of Thursday but took a hit on reports that a coronavirus treatment by drugmaker Gilead had disappointing results from a clinical trial.
The Dow plunged 300 points after the early afternoon report and remained volatile the rest of the session.
“Oil prices were up on optimism that U.S. demand destruction had bottomed out, that production would fall and on an expectation that oil can be stored in the U.S. Petroleum Reserve until the oversupply is erased,” said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Price Futures.
Wall Street was unresponsive after the U.S. Labor Department reported that 4.4 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, bringing to 26.5 million the number of jobs lost as the coronavirus recession took hold.