By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com – The S&P 500 turned positive Monday despite worries about a global economic slowdown as investors piled into beaten down stocks ahead of a crucial week of quarterly results for big tech.

This was a 0.03% increase, and the Nasdaq added 0.227% or 90 points.

Big tech moved off its worst levels of the day to help steady, led by gains in Google-parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:), and Microsoft  (NASDAQ: ahead of their quarterly results expected Tuesday.

Amazon (NASDAQ:), and Meta (NASDAQ:), Apple (NASDAQ:)  also cut losses, though the latter remained in slightly under the flatline.

These five megacap stocks, which account for more than a quarter of the weighting of the S&P 500 index, need to deliver quarterly results that drown out the fears of global slowdown.

“In a nutshell, the Street needs to see the fundamental drivers in play on the cloud, enterprise, and consumer front to show the ‘feared slowdown’ is more bark than bite at this point in the cycle,” Wedbush said Monday.

Twitter (NYSE 🙂 continued to dominate the news. The company announced in the afternoon that it had received a take-private deal from Tesla (NASDAQ 🙂 chief executive Elon Musk. He offered $54.20 per Share. Twitter will announce its quarterly results Thursday.

Stocks started the week on the back foot after as global growth concerned resurfaced on fears that rising Covid-19 cases in China could spark another lockdown in the world’s second largest economy.

On fears that China’s lockdown could decrease demand, energy stocks were the most affected, with a drop of more than 2%. Bloomberg reports, citing anonymous sources that China’s demand could decline by 20% in gasoline, diesel, or aviation fuels year-on-year, in April. 

Schlumberger NV (NYSE :), Halliburton NV (NYSE :), and Baker Hughes (NASDAQ) were the worst decliners in energy.

As Treasury yields eased from the recent meltdown, financials were suffering losses as well.

On the earnings front, meanwhile, Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ:) was down less than 1% after first-quarter revenue fell short of Wall Street expectations amid weaker than expected demand for its “Call of Duty: Warzone.”

Wall Street analysts believe there are still risks despite the recovery.

“We do not see the daily, weekly, or monthly charts as necessarily ‘oversold’ at this point- which implies there is likely more downside ahead before current selling conditions hit extremes,” Janney Montgomery Scott said in a note.