Wall Street rises for first time in 3 days

NEW YORK

Wall Street rallied Thursday for its first gain in three days after a sudden surge in oil prices revived beaten-down energy stocks. But, as has so often been the case in this year’s market sell-off, it took a few U-turns to get there.

The price of crude spurted as much as 30% higher after President Donald Trump said he expects Russia and Saudi Arabia to back away from their price war, which erupted last month and helped drag

U.S. oil to its lowest price in 18 years.

The surge lifted energy stocks enough to pull the S&P 500 higher and outshine another dismal report showing that millions of Americans are joining the unemployment queue by the week.

But stocks and oil quickly pared much of their initial gains and then seesawed through the day as markets weighed how seriously to take Trump’s statement, particularly after the Kremlin reportedly disputed part of his tweet, before climbing again to the close.

By the end of trading, the S&P 500 rose 2.3%, while U.S. oil was up $5.01, or 24.7%, after settling at $25.32 per barrel.

“Investors are just grasping at a positive straw here on a particular day,” said Phil Orlando, chief equity market strategist at Federated Hermes. “The collapse in the energy market is creating a significant amount of additional pressure on the U.S. economy, not nearly as significant as the coronavirus, but significant nonetheless.”

The market’s focus has been on oil not just because its plunge to below $20 earlier this week from $60 at the start of the year has caused stocks in the industry to more than halve. Another worry is that heavily indebted oil companies will also be forced to default, which could cause more damage in the bond market where the total amount of debt has exploded.

Producers have been continuing to pull oil from the ground to maintain their market share, even as demand for energy cratered because of widespread stay-at-home orders and other economy-damaging restrictions caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

“This is a knee-jerk reaction more than anything else,” Willie Delwiche, investment strategist at Baird, said of Thursday’s rebound. “I don’t think it changes much of the bigger picture for what we’re going through in terms of economic uncertainty and trying to wrap our minds around the extent of the weakness we’re going to see.”

The S&P 500 rose 56.40 points (2.3%) to 2,526.90. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 469.93 (2.2%) to 21,413.44, and the Nasdaq rose 126.73 (1.7%) to 7,487.31. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks picked up 12.59 (1,1%) to 1,084.58 .