By Yasin Ebrahim
Investing.com – The Dow closed lower Monday, on rising political tensions after lawmakers stepped up efforts to remove President Donald Trump from office, though losses were stifled by gains in energy and healthcare stocks.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.29%, or 89 points, though had been down 266 points at the lows of the day. The S&P 500 closed 0.63% lower, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.25%.
The House introduced an article of impeachment on Monday, accusing Trump of "incitement of insurrection" following the invasion of the U.S. Capitol, and plans to vote on it this week. The Democrats have given Vice President Mike Pence 24 hours to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president, or will move forward the impeachment that could also result in a ban on Trump from taking public office.
Beyond politics, the corporate world has also moved to curb Trump's reach. Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) said it would ban Trump from accessing his account indefinitely, sending its shares down more than 5%.
While there is a near-term threat to Twitter's daily active user count in the first quarter, owing to "churn from the conservative community" … "strong political activists will remain on the social media platform for other content," Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) said.
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)'s Google and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), meanwhile, closed more than 2% lower after banning conservative social media platform Parler from their app stores, as the company failed to take measures to stop content that incited violence and promoted illegal activities.
Boeing (NYSE:BA) weighed on industrials, falling 1.5% after its 737-500 jet crashed on Saturday, following takeover from Jakarta’s main airport.
Energy and healthcare helped keep a lid on losses, with the latter boosted by a jump in Eli Lilly.
Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) rose 11% after announcing that its experimental drug appeared to slow the decline of patients with the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.
Energy rose more than 1% as oil prices turned positive even as concerns over fresh lockdowns hurting energy demand persisted amid the ongoing pandemic.
President-elect Biden is expected to lay out his multi-trillion stimulus plan - likely to include a proposal to increase the amount of stimulus checks to $2,000 from $600 - later this week on Thursday. As well as another round of larger stimulus checks, state and local aid and funds for vaccine distribution are also expected to form part of the relief package.
In other news, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) fell 8%, shrugging off positive remarks from Bank of America.
Bank of America upgraded its price on the stock to $900 from $500, citing the electric automaker's fundraising potential.