Paris (AFP)
World markets remained hesitant Friday after a fluctuating week, struggling to hold on to the hope aroused by the massive mobilization of central banks and governments to counter the effects of the coronavirus.
European stock markets continued their rebound from the previous day: Paris rose 5.01% and Frankfurt 3.70%. The increase was less strong in London (+ 0.76%), Milan (+ 1.71%) and Madrid (+ 0.74%).
For their part, the borrowing rates of European countries experienced a general easing.
On the other hand, Wall Street ended again in the red, ending its worst week since the financial crisis of 2008. The Dow Jones lost 4.55% Friday, the Nasdaq 3.79% and the S&P 500 4.34%.
Similarly, despite a positive start, Asia has not managed to stay the course, Tokyo in particular, weighed down by the historic rout of Softbank.
The equity markets have chained sessions this week with frequent intraday fluctuations.
"There are a few buds today," said AFP Alain Zeitouni, director of management for Russell Investments France, based in London.
Starting with the drop in volatility. "Yesterday, the S&P 500 index experienced a change of less than 1% for the first time in 13 sessions. This could be the start of a sign of stabilization," he explains.
Investors witnessed a deluge of additional monetary and fiscal announcements in an attempt to avoid the worst-case scenario when the first impacts of the epidemic are already visible.
With the direct consequence of seeing public deficits increase, with targeted spending to support businesses or even health spending.
- Dark economic picture -
While the peak now seems to have been reached in China, it is Europe's turn to fall prey to the Covid-19, which has killed more than 5,000 people, half the deaths in the world.
The markets face an unpleasant economic picture but hope that the hundreds of billions pledged by central banks and governments will bear fruit.
The fact that US President Donald Trump touted the use of chloroquine, an antimalarial, as a possible treatment for the coronavirus on Thursday, after encouraging results in China and France, also offered support.
For the time being, they continue to follow the redoubling of containment efforts and are particularly on the lookout for any sign of deterioration in the United States, where the governor of California has decided to place all of his approximately 40 million inhabitants in confinement and that of New York announced similar measures.
"While cases of coronavirus are increasing in the United States and more and more companies are lowering their growth estimates very sharply for the world's largest economy," said John Plassard at Mirabaud.
Some experts fear that the economic crisis resulting from the pandemic will be worse than that of the "subprime" of 2008.
If heavy goods vehicles, like Apple, have substantial cash, others can only hold a few months without cash inflows due to confinements.
To avoid a financial liquidity crisis, several central banks, including the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England, announced Friday a coordinated action to facilitate access to dollars.
"We already had (interest) rates close to zero (... the problem is not liquidity" and the stimulus policies may not work because "both supply and demand are broken ", Ian Goldin, an economist at the University of Oxford who warned in 2015 about the systemic risks of a pandemic.
The urgency, he advocates, is to give a basic income to all those who have "low income or no medical coverage" and who, if they are infected with the coronavirus, will want to continue working at risk. to infect others.
On the foreign exchange market, the euro started to rise again against the dollar (+ 0.26% to 1.0694 dollar) after falling Thursday to its lowest level in three years against the American currency losing momentum , after its last few days.
Crude prices, greatly weakened by the crisis, sank Friday late in the day. Brent North Sea crude for May delivery fell just over 5% to $ 26.98 a barrel and WTI's US barrel for April, the last trading day, fell about 11% to 22.53 dollars. Over the week, he dropped almost 30%.
bur-abx-pan-vac / tq / dho /
© 2020 AFP