Stocks Plunge and Bond Yields Sink: Live Updates - The New York Times

Here’s what you need to know:

• Wall Street’s sell-off intensifies.
• A burst of hiring before the coronavirus outbreak shook economic confidence.
• Oil prices dive as OPEC meets.
• Microsoft reports two cases in the Seattle area.
• Here’s what else is happening.

Wall Street’s sell-off intensifies.

Stocks plunged on Friday, and investors rushed to the safety of government bonds, as Wall Street was gripped by another wave of panic over the spreading coronavirus.

The most dramatic move in financial markets Friday was a sharp drop in yields on government bonds. The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note sank to 0.7 percent for the first time. Yields move inversely to bond prices and their slide has come as investors have fled risky investments and put their money into low-interest but safe Treasury bonds.

A strong report on the American job market on Friday didn’t change the direction of the markets. The U.S. government said employers added 273,000 jobs in February. But the data was a snapshot of a point in time when the prevailing sentiment was that the United States would remain relatively unaffected by the coronavirus.

Traders smoke before the closing bell outside the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday.Credit...Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

For many the question now is how much damage can the virus do to the global economy and its growth prospects for the year.

“The epidemic has already dented anemic global economic growth this year and it can be expected to slow further, then contract, as the fear of the virus takes hold,” said Nigel Green, chief executive of deVere Group, an investment firm.

Factories in China are still struggling to get back up and running. Thousands of flights around the world have been grounded. Supply chains have been snarled, shaking some of the world’s biggest companies and forcing an untold number of workers to stay home.

“Against this backdrop, we should prepare for a short-term but severe global recession,” Mr. Green said.

Shares in Europe were also sharply lower: In London, the FTSE 100 index was down more than 3 percent on Friday. Germany’s DAX index was 3.4 percent lower, and France’s CAC 40 index fell 3.6 percent.

In Tokyo, Hong Kong and Seoul, markets closed more than 2 percent lower. In the mainland Chinese markets of Shanghai and Shenzhen, markets fell about 1 percent. An index of China’s biggest companies listed in Hong Kong dropped by nearly 2 percent.

A burst of hiring before the coronavirus outbreak shook economic confidence.

For the second month in a row, the United States economy churned out a blockbuster number of jobs, the government reported Friday, an impressive showing in an era of slow-and-steady employment growth.

Get an informed guide to the global outbreak with our daily coronavirus newsletter.

Employers added 273,000 jobs in February. Analysts had expected a gain of about 165,000, according to MarketWatch.

But with the coronavirus outbreak shaking economic confidence, the solid showing may not be a harbinger of continued strength.

Every jobs report looks backward, but February’s report captures a particularly unusual moment before the market was gripped with anxiety about the global impact of a widening epidemic.

“There is a red line in the calendar,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. “The value of it is that this report gives us kind of a benchmark of where we were before things began to go wrong.”

Oil prices dive as OPEC meets.

Oil prices sank on Friday as major producers gathered for a critical meeting to try to agree on production cuts to try to manage the falling demand for crude as concerns about coronavirus spread across the globe.

Brent crude fell about 4 percent, as low as $47.02 a barrel, a two-and-a-half-year low. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, was as low as $43.28 a barrel.

Oil prices have fallen more than 20 percent since early January when China, a major importer of oil, started confronting the emerging coronavirus outbreak.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other producers, including Russia, are meeting in Vienna to try to steady the prices by reducing output beyond cuts that were already approved.

Microsoft reports two cases in the Seattle area.

Microsoft said late Thursday that two employees in the Seattle area have been diagnosed with coronavirus, the first known cases at the company, which is one of the region’s largest employers.

“The affected employees remain in quarantine, and we are supporting them as the recover,” Microsoft executive Kurt DelBene said in an email to employees obtained by The Times.

The email said one of the employees worked at a building in Microsoft’s headquarters campus at the time the employee developed symptoms. The other, who worked at LinkedIn, had no known contact.

The Seattle area is the first region in the United States where the authorities have issued sweeping recommendations that people stay home to slow the spread of coronavirus.

In Washington State, 13 people have died of coronavirus. More than 60 other people have been treated for the virus in the state, leading state officials to declare an emergency.

And in pockets all around Seattle, people were heeding the advice of officials and staying in. Microsoft, Amazon and many other top employers told their employees to work from home.

Here’s what else is happening.

• Ziehl-Abegg, a German maker of high-performance electric fans, has effectively forbidden its employees from going on vacation in the region of Italy known as South Tyrol, a popular destination for skiers, because of coronavirus danger.

• On Thursday, Starbucks warned that its quarterly same-store sales in China, where it has a huge presence, would fall 50 percent compared to last year, resulting in a $400 million to $430 million hit to its revenue forecast.

Reporting was contributed by Alexandra Stevenson, Stanley Reed, Karen Weise, Kirk Johnson and Jack Ewing.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/business/stock-markets-today.html

2020-03-06 14:26:15Z
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