- Virus panic is spreading through the markets
- US500 tested 3000 level before recovering
- EURUSD near 1.10 amid stimulus hopes
A spread of coronavirus is the main and pretty much ONLY theme on the markets on Thursday, a day that is bound to see a record number of ex-China infections registered in many countries. This number was record high already on Wednesday (at 569 confirmed cases in 26 countries outside of China) but on Thursday 505 cases were confirmed just in South Korea. Such a fast spread raises concerns that limits will be put in place that will hurt business activity and that global fear will hit both consumer and business confidence.
At one point we saw the indices literally panic, with all the major markets being down some 3% despite declining already for the 6th day in a row. DE30 broke 12465 support and slid below 12250 and US500 was just a notch above 3000 pts. But both markets managed to climb some 2% into the afternoon buoying market sentiment.
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US500 tries to defend key mid-term support lines. Will it work? Source: xStation5
One of the reasons behind this move could be discounting some policy action from the Fed. Markets already see a good chance for action on the March meeting and fully discount 2 cuts this year! This is seen on the FX market where the EURUSD gains 0.8% using both USD weakness and talks of fiscal stimulus in Germany. This helps European EM currencies but Latam EMs (MXN, BRL) are still down for the day.
Panic selling included OIL and OIL.WTI – these markets were losing more than 5% at one point as economic consequences of the virus can hit oil demand quite hard. OIL.WTI touched $46 but managed to recover some ground with US equities. Interestingly precious metals are no longer outperforming amid uncertainty – Gold is stable but Silver and Platinum are down quite a bit.
On the data front we had a decent report on US durable orders (core orders increased by 0.9% m/m in January) but the data really doesn’t affect markets at present. All the spotlight is on virus cases – if they are contained, markets could rebound. Otherwise it could be another failed attempt.
