The Dow and S&P500 retreated in subdued trading as investors’ attention turns to the first quarter corporate earnings season that kicks off this week - Dow down -329-points or -1.39%. Caterpillar Inc fell -8.71% and was the worst performing Dow constituent after a Bank of America analyst cut his rating on the stock to underperform from neutral.The broader S&P500 fell -1.01%, with Real Estate (down -4.59%) and Financials (-3.58%) leading eight of the eleven primary sectors lower. Consumer Discretionary (up +1.10%) was the best performing primary sector. Ford Motor Co fell -3.91% after the auto maker warned of lower sales in the first quarter due to the pandemic. A late rally saw the NASDAQ settle with a +0.47% gain. Netflix Inc jumped +7.01%, recouping all of its COVID-19 induced losses and topping its previous record closing high of US$387.78 set on 18 February. Fellow television streaming company Roku Inc jumped over >10% in extended trading after announcing it added nearly 3M new users in the first three months of the year, more than the 2.56M net additions that analysts expected. The company said that collective streaming hours for the period was 13.2B, up 49% from last year. Amazon.com Inc rallied +6.17% after the e-commerce and cloud giant said it was hiring 75,000 more employees, in addition to the 100,000 it already hired, to help meet increased demand. Apple Inc (up +1.96%) and Google unveiled a rare partnership to add technology to their smartphone platforms that will alert users if they have come into contract with a person with COVID-19. People must opt in to the system known as contact tracing.
