Stocks nearly flat as oil halts slide

U.S. stock indexes held steady Thursday after the price of oil halted its slide, at least for now.

Energy stocks fell again, but not by nearly as much as earlier in the week, after crude rose for the first time in four days. Big gains for healthcare stocks also helped offset losses for financial companies and other areas of the market, leaving indexes close to flat.

Markets this week have been dominated by oil’s tumbling price and worries about how much that drop will affect the broader market. On Thursday, benchmark U.S. crude rose 21 cents to settle at $42.74 a barrel, and Brent crude, the international standard, rose 40 cents to $45.22 a barrel. That was a big shift in momentum compared with earlier in the week, when oil dropped to its lowest level since August on expectations that supplies will exceed demand.

Energy stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index slipped 0.1% — a much milder drop than the previous two days, when they fell at least 1.2%.

Healthcare stocks in the S&P 500 jumped 1.1%, by far the biggest gain among the 11 sectors that make up the index, after the Senate unveiled its proposal to revamp how Americans get medical care. The sector is up 3.7% for the week; meanwhile, the overall index is up just 0.1%.

Envision Healthcare, which provides physician and ambulance services, went up 3.5% to $60.30. HCA Healthcare, which owns hospitals, rose 2.5% to $86.14, and biopharmaceutical firm Gilead Sciences climbed 4.4% to $70.48.

Trovagene soared 37.4% to $1.30 after the San Diego developer of diagnostic tech announced a deal with an unnamed “premier biopharmaceutical company” to provide liquid biopsy tests for use in clinical trials.

Thursday’s biggest gainer in the S&P 500 was Oracle, which jumped 8.6% to $50.30 after reporting stronger revenue and earnings for its latest quarter than analysts expected.

On the opposite end was Accenture, which fell 4% to $122.08. The consulting firm posted quarterly earnings that were in line with analysts’ expectations, but it also trimmed the top end of its forecast for revenue growth this year, when taking into account changes in foreign-currency values.

The 10-year Treasury yield held steady at 2.15%.

The euro fell to $1.1147 from $1.1167. The dollar held steady at 111.34 Japanese yen.

Gold climbed $3.60 to $1,249.40 an ounce, silver rose 14 cents to $16.51 an ounce and copper was flat at $2.60 a pound.

Natural gas was close to flat at $2.89 per 1,000 cubic feet. Heating oil rose 1 cent to $1.37 a gallon. Wholesale gasoline rose 2 cents to $1.43 a gallon.