Stock futures swung marginally lower Sunday night as investors pondered a patchwork of state proposals to slowly scale back measures of social distance and reopening more states back to business.
A handful of states in the South over the past week declared several businesses and public spaces would start reopening with limits, setting off a multi-phase process to ease the social distancing measures that had been in effect for several weeks.
The decisions were met with criticism from some business owners, epidemiologists and lawmakers who thought it was premature - even as the U.S. domestic death toll topped 50,000.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were up 177 points, indicating a rise of about 168 points on Monday's opening. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures have pointed to the two indexes seeing a higher open Monday. West Texas Intermediate futures were down at $15.18 a barrel, more than 10 percent.
As a historic plunge in oil prices, Wall Street's coming off its first weekly fall and sent investors on a wild ride. The Dow and S&P 500 both dropped more than 1 percent last week, while the Nasdaq Composite declined by 0.2 percent.
Stock indexes were down in the past days, snapping a two-week streak of rallies, as investors weighed economic data, mixed corporate earnings and the latest outbreak-linked economic relief budget from Congress.
Nevertheless, recent reports have indicated a leveling off of the epidemic, also in the states most affected by it. On Sunday, in a press conference, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said that the state's current daily death toll fell to 367, the lowest in nearly a month, and told listeners that, "So long so we behave prudently, the worst will be over."
He said a phased reopening could begin with construction and manufacturing industries as soon as after May 15, in areas with less concentrated numbers of infections.
The governor also noted that coronavirus-related hospitalizations have dropped for two weeks and that virus fatalities in New York reached a near one-month decline. Those comments came as the state of Georgia started to re-open its economy.
According to Marc Chaikin, chief executive officer of Chaikin Analystics, as various states start to reopen their economies and ease social distance policies, "we will get a peek of what the new normal will look like."
In Asian, stocks were up on Monday as major economies edged toward reopening. The Bank of Japan bolstered its stimulus measures and corporate results rolled in. The US currency weakened and oil slumped.
