Stocks - Wall Street Extends Tentative Recovery at Open; DJIA up 0.9%

By Geoffrey Smith

Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets extended a modest recovery in early trading on Friday, as measures earlier in the week by the Federal Reserve and other central banks to unjam financial markets gained more traction.

Earlier, the Federal Reserve said that it would step up offerings of dollars through swap facilities with other central banks. In addition, it said it would accept municipal debt as collateral for funds loaned through its new facility to backstop the money market fund sector, a reflection of the need to backstop lending by lower levels of government that are on the front line of fighting the coronavirus epidemic.

Government support measures continue to roll out, meanwhile: Senate Republicans introduced a stimulus bill worth $1.2 trillion that includes both direct payments to households and tens of billions in potential aid to businesses

By 11:20 AM ET (1520 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 58 points or 0.3% at 20,145 points. The S&P 500 was down 0.3% and the NASDAQ Composite was up 1.0%. All three indices had opened higher before sliding a little.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) now predict an unprecedented 24% annualized decline in U.S. GDP in the second quarter and an increase in the jobless rate to 9%, as swathes of the U.S. economy shut down to stop the virus spreading. The analysts expect much of that to be made good in the second half of the year.

Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) stock rose 1.3%, Shopify (NYSE:SHOP) stock rose 12.1% and Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) stock rose 3.6%, all beneficiaries of what's expected to be a sweeping forced isolation of the population at home along the lines of the 'shelter-in-place' order issued by California Governor Gavin Newsom on Thursday. Zoom Video Communications (NASDAQ:ZM) rose another 9.6% in anticipation of a boom in video-conferencing.

Boeing (NYSE:BA) stock rose 7.1% amid ongoing speculation over the conditions that might be applied to any federal aid it receives. Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley resigned from the company's board, saying that she didn't agree with the company's request for a bailout.

Oil and gas stocks remained under pressure amid skepticism that the U.S. can end the current price war in crude oil, either by regulating domestic output or by diplomatic overtures toward Russia and Saudi Arabia. Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) stock fell 2.6%, while Occidental Petroleum (NYSE:OXY) stock fell 4.2%.

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