Friday’s Stock Market Open: US Equities Rebound From Thursday’s Massive Selloff

Update: 12:05 p.m. EDT:

U.S. stocks remained higher at Friday noon in erratic trading, but below earlier highs.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 481.56 points to 25,609.73, while the S&P 500 rose 47.28 points to 3,049.38 and the Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 135.79 points to 9,628.52.

In Europe markets closed mixed, as Britain’s FTSE-100 gained 0.47%, while France’s CAC-40 climbed 0.49% and Germany’s DAX slipped 0.18%.

Original story:

U.S. stocks climbed on Friday as traders sought to recover from dramatic declines on Thursday, while casting a cautious eye on covid-19 cases.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 681.57 points to 25,809.74, while the S&P 500 gained 76.14 points to 3,078.24 and the Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 231.21 points to 9,723.93.

The U.K. economy shrank by a record 20.4% in April.

Arizona, South Carolina and Texas have reported a spike in coronavirus cases. The U.S. has confirmed more than 2 million coronavirus cases along with at least 100,000 deaths.

Prices for U.S. imports increased 1% percent in May, after declining 2.6% in April.

Some analysts think U.S. stocks appreciated too much in the recent rally.

“Given the magnitude of the rally, it would shock me if we had a one day sell-off and that’s it,” said Andrew Slimmon, managing director and senior portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. “The stocks that are up the most from the lows are still the risk-on, high beta, value, small-cap stocks. They’re still the big winners and I would suspect that there’s more pain to come near-term before the market clears out kind of this excessive speculation that we’ve seen recently.”

“We had gone straight up more than 30% without a real sell-off, so you’re due for one, and I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world,” said JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade. “As more states get back, the question becomes: Are they going to ramp up fast enough to please Wall Street? What you’re seeing is it’ll be hard to do that. Some of these stocks may have gotten ahead of their skis. When you see some of the airlines being priced at the levels they were before this all started when they say they’re going to do 60% of their business just doesn’t make sense.”

Overnight in Asia, markets finished lower. The Shanghai Composite slipped 0.04%; Hong Kong’s Hang Seng retreated 0.73%; while Japan’s Nikkei-225 fell 0.75%.

In Europe markets traded higher, as Britain’s FTSE-100 gained 1.52%, while France’s CAC-40 climbed 1.96% and Germany’s DAX rose 1.05%.

Crude oil futures rose 1.29% at $36.81 per barrel, Brent crude climbed 1.58% at $39.16. Gold futures gained 0.37%.

The euro edged up 0.04% at $1.1303 while the pound sterling dropped 0.12% at $1.2587.