Major stock indicies opened the week higher on news that several states will be considering plans to reopen their economies and end mass lockdowns. CNBC said the Dow Jones was up 300 points (as of 11:57 a.m.), while the S&P 500 had gained 1.1 percent and the Nasdaq had gained 1.2 percent.

Traders are responding to news such as that coming out of New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently said that while the state generally would remain closed until at least May 15, there would be a phased reopening that would likely begin upstate and concentrate on the construction and manufacturing industries. After this, there would be a two-week pause to assess how things are going, during which the government would look at data including new hospitalizations, new cases, and antibody testing. While the governor said that New York City proper represents an altogether different case, Mayor Bill De Blasio recently discussed his own criteria for opening the city: continual decline in hospitalizations for two weeks, after which city officials would relax stay-at-home orders and reopen schools, businesses and cultural institutions.

Meanwhile, although oil price plunges made markets drop last week, it appears that traders so far are unperturbed by today's 25 percent drop in the price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude and a 6.2 percent drop in the price for Brent crude. The reasons for this drop are largely the same as the ones for last week's: Oversupply and falling demand have resulted in a severe shortage of storage space for all this oil, meaning no one is particularly interested in buying futures contracts right now. So far, WTI prices have fallen by 72 percent this year, while Brent crude prices have dropped by 68 percent in the same time period.