Wall Street set to bounce as investors bet on stimulus to thwart recession

By Sanjana Shivdas

(Reuters) – Wall Street was set for a strong rebound on Friday, with the Dow on course to jump nearly 1,000 points at the open as investors hoped more fiscal easing would head off a global recession.

After the worst daily selloff in more than three decades on Wall Street, airlines, cruise liners and energy stocks were set to recover ground on optimism that U.S. Democrats and Republicans could announce a stimulus package by Friday.

The Dow and the S&P 500 indexes, which had crashed almost 10% on Thursday, are still down over 25% from record highs hit mid-February and headed for their worst week since the financial crisis.

Policy easing by central banks in Asia lifted equities and bond yields in early trading on Friday, sending shares of major U.S. banks including Bank of America Corp , Citigroup Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co up between 7.5% and 11%. [US/]

“What we’re headed for is a market that should begin to settle down (with) investors now expecting the government to get the economic plan in place and get it into law,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities in New York.

Travel stocks, which have borne the brunt of the selloff, were set to rise, with cruise operators Carnival Corp , Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings up between 22.7% and 34.1%.

United Airlines rose 10.6% a day after losing a quarter of its value as the travel disruptions forced it to draw down $2 billion of existing cash reserves.

Energy companies <.SPNY>, which suffered their worst four-day declines on record due to a plunge in oil prices, were tracking crude price higher. [O/R]

Oil majors Exxon Mobil and Chevron Corp also rose more than 4%, while Occidental Petroleum Corp , Halliburton Co , Apache Corp jumped more than 19%.

At 8:59 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis <1YMcv1> were up 1,110 points, or 5.26%. S&P 500 e-minis were up 126 points, or 5.1% and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were up 407.5 points, or 5.65%.

Among individual movers, software company Oracle Corp jumped 11.8% after topping quarterly profit and revenue expectations and flagging a “minimal impact” from the virus outbreak on fourth-quarter revenue.

Gap Inc climbed 7.1% as it forecast 2020 profit above market expectations. It also flagged a $100 million sales hit in Asia and Europe from the coronavirus outbreak.

(Additional reporting by Medha Singh in Bengaluru; Writing by Sagarika Jaisinghani; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)