Coronavirus: Apple, Intel lead boost among Bay Area stocks

Apple was among the Bay Area companies seeing mild gains on the stocks market Monday as investors came back from the weekend to take some tentative steps forward in the wake of last week’s passage of the $2.2 trillion economic stimulus package.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 231.50 points, or 1%, to 21,868.28, while the S&P 500 was up by 1.4%, at 2,576.54 and the Nasdaq Composite Index rose by almost 2%, to 7,647.77.

On Friday, President Trump signed the stimulus package, meant to blunt at least some of the economic harm caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Federal officials said individuals should expect to see payments from the package withing a few weeks.

Meanwhile, on Monday, Apple shares rose 1.5 percent, to $251.50. While Apple is still several weeks away from giving its next quarterly earnings report, some potential signs of the state of Apple’s business were provided by Foxconn, the Taiwan-based electronics manufacturer that builds iPhones for Apple in China. Foxconn said its earnings for the last three months of 2019 fell by almost 24% from the prior year, and it expects earning to decline in the first quarter of this year due to factories shutting down as part of China’s efforts to contain the spread of coronavirus.

Intel shares rose 4.5%, to $54.74. Over the weekend, Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon raised his rating on Intel to market perform from underperform on the grounds that the semiconductor giant is in a better position than many other companies to weather the coronavirus-related effects on the economy.

Related Articles

Atlas Obscura: Beat the COVID-19 isolation with a virtual trip into the obscurePandemic TV: 15 shows in April that you’ll really want to seeThese Silicon Valley businesses are booming in the coronavirus eraYouTube, Zoom and kids: Working at home in the coronavirus ageStanford Hospital staff served Meals of GratitudeCisco Systems shares rose 2.3%, to $39.80, while Facebook was up by 2%, at $159.94, HP rose 1.3%, to $17.08 a share, AMD shares rose 1.4%, to $47.26 and Netflix was up by almost 3%, at $367.13 a share, as it, and other streaming TV providers touted free trial periods for their services for consumers staying at home under the current shelter-in-place guidelines.

On Sunday. President Trump extended nationwide social-distancing policies until the end of April.