The S&P 500 climbed 0.4 percent last week for its fourth straight gain amid investor confidence that the world’s largest economy will weather a global slowdown. U.S. GDP posted the biggest back-to-back quarterly increases since 2003 and the unemployment rate fell to a six-year low.

Energy shares dropped 2 percent last week, sinking with crude as concern grew that supply is outpacing demand. A surge in shale drilling has lifted U.S. production to a three-decade high while members from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have resisted calls to cut output. U.S. oil, which peaked around $107 a barrel on June 20, last settled at $75.82 after dropping for a seventh week, the longest stretch since 1986.

Energy Renaissance

“The decline in oil prices is not simply a function of slower global growth, it’s also a function of excessive supply, which in turn is being driven by the renaissance in U.S. energy production,” Russ Koesterich, chief investment strategist at New York-based BlackRock Inc., said in a phone interview. The firm oversees $4.53 trillion. “It’s a positive story here, which is you have a lot of supply and that supply is helping the U.S. economy.”

While stocks advanced, investors are parking more money in safe-haven companies whose earnings are less tied to economic growth. Over the past three months, health-care, consumer staples and utilities rose the most among 10 S&P 500 industries, jumping more than 7.5 percent.

The risk aversion reflects the same growth concern that is pushing down oil prices, said Brent Schutte, senior investment strategist at BMO Global Asset Management. A deterioration in crude may spur disruptions in developing countries and the U.S. credit market, where energy represents a bigger share, he said.

Market Disruptions

Oil and natural gas producers make up more than half of the stock market in Russia. In Venezuela, where oil accounts for 95 percent of exports, the yield on the country’s benchmark bonds rose to the highest level since the global financial crisis as sinking crude is undermining its ability to pay debt.

Bonds sold by energy companies now comprise a record 15 percent of Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s U.S. High Yield Index, up from 10 percent at the end of 2007.

“The question becomes, does it become self-fulfilling?” BMO’s Schutte said by phone from Chicago. The firm manages about $240 billion. “I don’t know it does, but certainly it can disrupt certain markets.”