Tuesday's Stock Market Open: US Equities Rise On Signs Coronavirus May Have Stabilized In US

Update: 12:05 p.m. EDT:

U.S. stocks traded higher as of Tuesday noon.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 447.02 points to 23,837.79, while the S&P 500 rose 61.23 points to 2,822.86 and the Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 247.22 points to 8,439.64.

In Europe markets closed mixed, as Britain’s FTSE-100 slipped 0.88%, France’s CAC-40 rose 0.38% and Germany’s DAX gained 1.25%.

Crude oil futures plunged 4.91% at $21.31 per barrel, Brent crude fell 5.43% at $30.

Original story:

U.S. stocks gained on Tuesday on some optimistic signs that the coronavirus crisis has stabilized in the U.S., as first quarter earnings season gets underway.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 398.64 points to 23,789.41, while the S&P 500 rose 48.30 points to 2,809.93 and the Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 153.07 points to 8,345.49.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that new coronavirus infections have stabilized, providing “clear evidence” that mitigation efforts have been successful.

Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S., said “the worst is over ... if we continue to be smart going forward.”

More than 1.9 million cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed around the world, with almost one-third of them in the U.S.

“Financial markets have started to take a more positive view of the outlook,” said Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs. “The initial improvement was mostly policy-driven, but the greater optimism of the past week seems to be at least partly related to the virus itself. To be clear, the health situation remains very bad in absolute terms, especially in the U.S. which is now ahead of Italy and Spain in terms of coronavirus-related fatalities (though still much lower on a per-capita basis). However, the number of new active cases looks to be peaking globally.”

“When you look at the facts, I think there’s reason to be more hopeful than we have been,” said CNBC’s Jim Cramer. “The worst case scenario’s been taken off the table, and if Apple and Google can do contact tracing that we all embrace ... while we continue to roll out more testing, the economy could reopen a lot sooner than we thought even, say, three weeks ago.”

On the earnings front, Johnson & Jonson (JNJ) reported better-than-expected earnings, raised dividends, but cut its forecast. Shares were up 3.6%.

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) reported a decline in first quarter profits, but delivered record markets revenue. Shares were up 2.5%

Overnight in Asia, markets were higher. China’s Shanghai Composite rose 1.59%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 0.56% and Japan’s Nikkei-225 jumped 3.13%.

In Europe markets were mixed, as Britain’s FTSE-100 slipped 0.56%, France’s CAC-40 rose 0.83% and Germany’s DAX gained 1.6%.

Crude oil futures dropped 4.46% at $21.41 per barrel, Brent crude fell 2.17% at $32.08. Gold futures edged up 0.45%.

The euro gained 0.45% at $1.0959 while the pound sterling gained 0.52% at $1.2570.