NEW YORK, March 7 (Reuters) – Oil prices jumped on Monday as optimism rose that major producers might reach a price support deal, helping USA stocks to notch a fifth straight session of gains.
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The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 67.18 points, or 0.4 per cent, to 17,073.95, the S&P 500 gained 1.77 points, or 0.09 per cent, to 2,001.76 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 8.77 points, or 0.19 per cent, to 4,708.25. However, losses in technology and consumer stocks offset gains in the energy and material sectors. Shares of Exxon were up 1.8 percent and those of Chevron rose 2.4 percent. The Dow closed above 17,000 on Friday for the first time since January, while the S&P was just shy of 2,000, levels that traders consider psychologically important.
Alphabet (GOOGL.O) and Facebook (FB.O) fell more than 2 percent each while Microsoft (MSFT.O) lost 1.9 percent and Apple (AAPL.O) shed 1.1 percent.
He said the oil market is finding a footing and that is allowing stocks in the sector to bounce.
The S&P/NZX 50 Index edged up 0.8 points, or 0.01 per cent, to 6,418.93. “A rally over the past three weeks suggests investors became a little too euphoric”, Cavanaugh said.
“Markets worldwide continued to rally since February 11th low; we’d expect a pause before moving higher”, John Stoltzfus, a market strategist at Oppenheimer told clients in an early-morning note Monday.
It’s not unusual for major indexes such as the Dow and S&P 500 that suffer steep downturns to have trouble breaking back above prior milestone markers in the market on the way back up.
Crude oil extended last week’s gains and were hovering at a two-month high.
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The euro’s gains were limited by the view the European Central Bank would embark on more stimulus to support the euro zone’s fragile economic recovery at its policy meeting on Thursday. Meanwhile, gold settled down $6.70, or 0.5%, at $1,264 an ounce. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .miapj0000pus rose 0.5 percent, paring about 80 percent of its losses since the start of 2016. The euro rose to one-week high of $1.1043 on Friday and last stood at $1.0992 while the yen was little changed at 113.88 to the dollar.
