US markets settled with modest losses - Dow down -120-points or -0.42%. Energy names were the biggest drag on the Dow, with Chevron Corp (down -1.28%) and Exxon Mobil Corp (-0.82%) among the top five contributors to the benchmark’s more than 100 point drop. Chevron, America’s No. 2 oil, company said in a statement Monday (6 January) that it evacuated all its American oil workers from Iraq following rising tensions in the region, following steps by Exxon to withdraw all of its employees from oil fields in southern Iraq. Boeing Inc rose +1.06%, helped by a rumour that Warren Buffett's investment vehicle Berkshire Hathaway might be buying the stock. The broader S&P500 -0.28%, UBS bumped up their year-end target for the US S&P 500 from 3,000 to 3,250, observing that that the Federal Reserve interest rate cuts in 2019 had sown the seeds for the next economic recovery, with US gross domestic product (GDP) growth likely to trough later in 2020. NASDAQ -0.04%. Micron Technology Inc (up +8.8%) led a fresh rally for chipmakers, buoyed by a broker upgrade. Tesla Inc climbed 4.2% after the electric-car maker said it was expanding production at its first overseas plant in China. Tesla’s market capitalisation has jumped above US$82B, exceeding Ford Motor Co’s at its valuation peak - a market capitalisation of US$80.8B in 1999, the same year Tesla’s Chief Executive Elon Musk founded a couple of tech companies, including the one that would later become PayPal Holdings Inc. Apache Corp surged 25% and logged its biggest one-day percentage gain since 1973 after it reported what it termed a significant oil discovery off the coast of Suriname.
