Friday 20 March 2020

Stocks mixed, oil surges amid more central bank action

Markets were mixed on Thursday.

Early in the day, Asian stocks fell. The KOSPI plunged 8.4 percent while the Nikkei 225 and Shanghai Composite both fell 1.0 percent.

However, the S&P 500 rose 0.5 percent and the STOXX Europe 600 surged 2.9 percent.

Oil prices surged. West Texas Intermediate crude jumped 23.8 percent and Brent rose 14.4 percent.

An announcement by the Federal Reserve early Thursday of the opening of additional, temporary dollar swap lines with other central banks as well as interest rate cuts and new asset purchase programmes by the Bank of England and European Central Bank helped shore up markets even as the number of cases of COVID-19 infections rose above 10,000 in the US on Thursday.

JP Morgan now forecasts a global recession in 2020. China's economy will shrink by 40 percent between January and March compared to the previous quarter, the biggest contraction recorded over the past 50 years at least, while US GDP will shrink at an annualised rate of 14 percent in the second quarter.

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