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Global markets rise after policy pledges.
Wall Street posted small gains on Friday and global financial markets looked set to finish a tumultuous week on a more positive note.
The S&P 500 rose nearly 1 percent in early trading, adding to another small gain on Thursday.
Investors, who have been rattled by the devastating impacts of the coronavirus, were encouraged by fresh measures by policymakers to shore up economies. In the United States, Senate Republicans on Thursday presented a $1 trillion economic stimulus bill. The Federal Reserve continued its swift action with a plan to support money market funds and extend currency swap lines to nine more countries in an attempt to keep dollars flowing to banks around the world.
In Europe, news of the European Central Bank’s massive bond-buying program appeared to also cheer investors, who piled money into financial markets, sending stocks in Paris and Frankfurt up more than 3 percent. In London, the FTSE 100 was up nearly 2 percent.
“The pledged policy response has been swift — and we expect total fiscal stimulus to be similar in size to that of the financial crisis but in a shorter time frame,” wrote analysts at BlackRock Investment Institute, a research arm of the world’s biggest money manager.
The rally comes after the worst week for U.S. markets in decades, and a month of selling that has brought major benchmarks back to levels last seen in 2017. A relentless barrage of troubling economic developments has battered stocks, bonds and oil prices.
The Labor Department on Thursday reported a surge in unemployment claims — 281,000 new claims — last week, one of the largest spikes on record. But Goldman Sachs analysts, in a research note, estimated that the claims for the week of March 15-21, which will be reported next Thursday, could hit more than 2 million.
“Even the most conservative assumptions suggest that initial jobless claims are likely to total over 1 million, which would easily surpass the highest level on record of 695,000 in 1982,” they wrote.
China lifts quarantines, aiming for a return to work.
China is removing barriers to the movement of people and goods in much of the country after announcing that new cases of local coronavirus transmissions had fallen to zero.
The government will take measures to speed up the return to work for millions of people, including getting rid of mandatory quarantines for workers in parts of the country now considered “low-risk,” Li Keqiang, China’s No. 2 official, said in a statement.
China is eager to get the economic engines of the world’s second-largest economy up and running again after damaging government data pointed to the possibility that it will face its first economic contraction since 1976.
Earlier this week, the government said it reached a record number of imported cases of the virus, just as local cases in China dropped to zero. Chinese authorities are now focusing on travelers who are arriving from abroad who could potentially start a second wave of cases.
Inbound and outbound tourism will continue to be suspended. On Thursday, China’s aviation regulator said that airlines were asked to reduce capacity on international flights arriving in China.
China’s push to return to work comes as governments around the world have begun to announce new policies this week to close businesses and restaurants and keep citizens indoors as they face a steep rise in coronavirus cases.
A torrent of job losses threatens to overwhelm the U.S. economy.
In an early sign of the coronavirus pandemic’s devastating impact on American workers, the Labor Department on Thursday reported a 30 percent increase in unemployment claims last week, one of the largest spikes on record.
The surge — 281,000 new claims — reflects a crushing new reality: Any hopes that businesses could keep their staffs largely intact have quickly evaporated.
Job losses have become so sensitive that the Trump administration is asking state labor officials to delay releasing the precise number of unemployment claims.
As employers at global conglomerates and kitchen-table offices anxiously grapple with the economy’s partial shutdown, tens of thousands of laid-off workers are jamming government websites and phone lines to apply for unemployment insurance.
In some states, overwhelmed systems collapsed under the weight.
Netflix and YouTube in Europe will reduce video quality to help internet.
European officials are raising alarms that the region’s internet infrastructure is beginning to feel the strain as millions of people are told to stay home to slow the spread of coronavirus.
In response, Netflix and YouTube said they would reduce the streaming quality of their services in Europe for the next 30 days. By switching to standard definition video rather than high definition, the services will not swallow up as much bandwidth, freeing up space.
The steps were announced after the European Union called on the companies to find ways to limit the amount of data needed for their services. In Europe, like the United States, internet services that people use at home are largely designed to handle short periods of high demand, mostly in the evenings. But now they are being relied upon for work video calls and other data-intensive daytime tasks that people typically perform at the office.
Hong Kong-based airlines join others in slashing service.
More airlines in Asia cut back their services on Friday, as the travel industry finds itself helpless in the face of cratering demand.
Cathay Pacific, based in Hong Kong, said on Friday it would cut its passenger capacity by 96 percent in April and May, operating three flights per week to 12 cities. Cathay Dragon, a regional airline, will be reduced to three flights per week to three cities.
Hong Kong Express, a low-cost airline owned by Cathay, said it would shut down through April 30.
“We need to take difficult but decisive measures as the scale of the challenge facing the global aviation industry is unprecedented,” Ronald Lam, Cathay Pacific’s chief customer and commercial officer, said in a statement.
SoftBank value plummets as investors question big bets on tech.
The value of Japan’s SoftBank corporation has cratered over the last month in an expression of investor concern whether the company’s big bets on precarious tech firms make it especially vulnerable to the coronavirus’s economic effects.
On Friday afternoon in Tokyo, shares of the company — which has used its $100 billion Vision Fund to become a kingmaker in Silicon Valley — were trading at just under half of their value a month ago.
The company ran into trouble last year after a big bet on WeWork fizzled, forcing Masayoshi Son, Softbank’s founder and chief, to stage a multibillion-dollar rescue attempt. Big bets on companies like Uber had also disappointed, and in February, the company announced a $2 billion loss during the last quarter of 2019.
Earlier this week, SoftBank threatened to withdraw $3 billion it had said it would use to buy WeWork shares as part of its rescue package. Last Friday, SoftBank said it would spend up to 500 billion yen ($4.5 billion) on a buyback of its own stock.
Coronavirus shipping delays are stalling construction.
When it comes to obtaining building materials, real estate developers often buy globally, not locally. But as the coronavirus spreads across the world, bringing countries to a standstill, the lack of access to overseas supplies is sending jitters through the construction industry.
Delayed so far at large-scale residential and commercial projects have been goods like marble, tile, paving stones, furniture, lighting equipment and elevators — and even models of buildings themselves, workers say.
Warning signs are appearing on multiple fronts. And the setbacks threaten jobs in an industry that employs millions of people. In many cases, no materials means no work, analysts say.
Tesla will suspend operations at its car factory in Fremont, Calif.
Tesla, the luxury electric carmaker, said on Thursday that it would temporarily shut down production at its factory in the San Francisco Bay Area starting Monday.
The company was under increasing pressure from local government officials and workers in recent days to stop making cars. Much of the Bay Area, including Tesla’s factory in Fremont, are under orders to shelter in place.
Earlier on Thursday, Kimberly Petersen, the chief of the Fremont Police Department, and other city officials had planned to meet with Tesla management to discuss compliance with an order by Alameda County limiting the operations of nonessential businesses, the department said on Twitter.
Airbnb looks to raise new funding as its business crumbles.
Airbnb, the home rental start-up, has been holding talks with investors about new funding as the spread of the coronavirus ravages its business ahead of its planned initial public offering.
The company, which is based in San Francisco, is valued at $31 billion by private investors. It began fielding unsolicited offers last week from venture capital firms, private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds, according to a person familiar with the situation. Offers have ranged from $100 million to $1 billion, the person said. Valuations have not yet been discussed.
The deal talks were first reported by CNBC.
Airbnb has not decided whether it will raise more funding, which could be used to snap up smaller competitors that are struggling amid the industry downturn, the person said. The company has $3 billion in cash on its balance sheet and access to another $1 billion line of credit.
Reporting and research were contributed by Alexandra Stevenson, Ben Dooley, Jason Karaian, Adam Satariano, C.J. Hughes, Ben Casselman, Niraj Chokshi, Daniel Victor and Kevin Granville.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/business/stock-market-today-coronavirus.html
2020-03-20 13:48:05Z
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