Apple, Intel and Netflix were among the notable Bay Area companies to see their shares lose ground Tuesday, with investors driving stocks into the red, again, as the price of oil continued to drop because of a lack of demand brought on by the coronavirus crisis.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 566.88 points, or 2.4%, to 23,083.56, after falling almost 600 points on Monday. The losses were largely spurred the price of oil for future delivery into negative territory for the first time in history. The price drop has been attributed to a big decline in demand for gasoline as U.S. consumers are driving less and spending more time at home under widespread shelter-in-place orders around the country.
“While shock headlines from COVID-19 are hitting the airwaves at two-minute intervals, the oil market is dishing up its own horror,” said Barani Krishnan, commodities analyst and Investing.com. “Oil, at the moment, is a market that’s unloved and uncared.”
Along with the Dow’s continuing losses, the S&P 500 fell by almost 3%, to 2,740.36, and the Nasdaq Composite Index tumbled by almost 4%, to 8,238.05.
Among Bay Area companies, Netflix shares fell by 2.5%, to $426.72 in advance of the streaming TV leader’s first-quarter results, due after the stock market’s close on Tuesday. Netflix is expected to report better-than-expected growth new subscribers because of people staying at home due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Apple, which just days ago quietly unveiled the new version of its iPhone SE, saw its shares fall by 3%, to $268.48. Semiconductor giant Intel, which reports its first-quarter results on Thursday, gave up almost 5%, to fall to $56.27 a share.
Tesla shares tumbled by almost 8%, to $689.36, while HP shares fell nearly 4%, to $14.78, Cisco Systems was down by 4%, at $40.69 a share and Facebook shares were off by 5%, at $169.50.
On Monday, Facebook debuted a new interactive map designed to track the percentage of people in individual counties who have reported coronavirus symptoms.
