US equity markets dropped to two week lows, with technology stocks leading the declines and with investors pondering the historic collapse in oil prices - Dow fell -632-points or -2.67% International Business Machines (IBM) Corp fell -3% reported after reporting the closing bell of the previous session that revenue returned to a decline in the first quarter amid the spread of COVID-19, The broader S&P500 shed -3.07%, with Information Technology (down -4.10%) leading all eleven primary sectors lower. The Energy sector declined -1.68%. President Trump tweeted that he instructed the Energy and Treasury departments to “formulate a plan which will make funds available so that these very important companies and jobs will be secured long into the future.” Salesforce.Com Inc (down -7.5%) and Oracle Corp (down -4.82%) both fell more than 4% after IBM said its software and global business segments suffered from strong headwinds in the last two weeks of March due to the virus. United Airlines Holdings Inc fell -1.76% in after hours trading after announcing plans to raise more than >US$1B via the issue of 39.205M shares in a price range of US$25.95-to-US$26.50 per share (versus the closing price of US$). The NASDAQ -3.48%. Wall Street analysts cut their price targets for Alphabet Inc (down -4%) and Facebook Inc (-4.2%) and warned about further weakness in online advertising sales.
