Week In Review: How Trump's Policies Moved Stocks -Saturday, April 18

Catch up on the top industries and stocks that were impacted, or were predicted to be impacted, by the comments, actions and policies of President Donald Trump and his administration with this weekly recap compiled by The Fly:

 'OPENING UP AMERICA AGAIN': 

On Thursday night, President Trump unveiled guidelines for "Opening Up America Again," which he called "a three-phased approach based on the advice of public health experts." In "Phase One," sit-down dining, movie theaters, sporting venues, and places of worship can operate under strict physical distancing protocols. Elective surgeries can resume, as clinically appropriate, on an outpatient basis at facilities that adhere to CMS guidelines. Gyms can open if they adhere to strict physical distancing and sanitation protocols. In "Phase Two," schools and organized youth activities can reopen and bars may operate with diminished standing-room occupancy, where applicable and appropriate.

U.S. WEIGHS PAYING OIL DRILLERS NOT TO DRILL:

The White House is weighing paying U.S. oil producers to leave crude in the ground to help mitigate a glut that has caused prices to drop and forced some drillers into bankruptcy, Bloomberg's Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Sheela Tobben reported. The Energy Department has come up with a plan to compensate firms for sitting on as much as 365M barrels worth of oil reserves by effectively making that untapped crude part of the federal government's emergency stockpile, the authors say, citing senior Trump administration officials. Publicly traded oil exploration and production companies include BP (BP), Chevron (CVX), ConocoPhillips (COP), Exxon Mobil (XOM), Royal Dutch Shell (RDS-A), Total (TOT), Antero Resources (AR), SM Energy (SM), Callon Petroleum (CPE), Oasis Petroleum (OAS), Laredo Petroleum (LPI), Extraction Oil & Gas (XOG), Crescent Point Energy (CPG), Centennial Resource Dev (CDEV), Whiting Petroleum (WLL), and PDC Energy (PDCE).

U.S. AIRLINES TO APPLY FOR LOANS AFTER GRANTS: 

Several big U.S. airlines are planning to apply for a $25B U.S. government loan program after receiving billions of dollars in federal payroll assistance grants, Reuters' Tracy Rucinski and David Shepardson reported, citing people familiar with the matter. While some airlines had initially planned to take only the money allotted in federal payroll grants, there is a growing realization that the terms of the separate loan package may be a lot better than those available in capital markets, the authors noted. Publicly traded companies in the space include Alaska Air (ALK), American Airlines (AAL), Delta Air Lines (DAL), JetBlue (JBLU), Southwest (LUV), Spirit Airlines (SAVE) and United Airlines (UAL).

TRUMP SAYS COVID-19 TECH POSES 'BIG PROBLEMS': 

President Trump claimed that Google (GOOGL) and Apple's (AAPL) technology for detecting COVID-19 poses "big constitutional problems" for "a lot of people," Business Insider's Charlie Wood reported. The president made the remark during a White House press briefing on Monday, adding that the issue would be discussed over the next four weeks. Google and Apple partnered last week to create a contact-tracing system for detecting the spread of coronavirus, which will gradually be rolled out in the coming months. It is unclear what specific constitutional problems Trump thinks the tech poses, but the two firms say it requires explicit user consent and does not collect personally identifiable information.

OPEC+ OIL CUTS: 

President Trump said via Twitter that, "Having been involved in the negotiations, to put it mildly, the number that OPEC+ is looking to cut is 20 Million Barrels a day, not the 10 Million that is generally being reported. If anything near this happens, and the World gets back to business from the Covid 19 [....] disaster, the Energy Industry will be strong again, far faster than currently anticipated. Thank you to all of those who worked with me on getting this very big business back on track, in particular Russia and Saudi Arabia."

STIMULUS PAYMENTS HELD UP: 

Federal stimulus payments from the U.S. government have been held up for millions of American, or the wrong amount has been deposited in their bank accounts, The Washington Post's Heather Long and Michelle Singletary reported. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has instructed the Internal Revenue Service to get payments out as fast as possible, but numerous glitches - affecting filers who used tax preparers, parents of dependent children and people with 2019 tax returns still to be processed - are delaying payments or resulting in mispayments, the authors said.

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