Oil prices crashed by more than a fifth after Saudi Arabia started a price war, sending rattled stock markets plunging and spurring a rush into government bonds as investors sought havens. Crude was on track for its biggest one-day drop since the 1991 Gulf war after the Saudi move, which threatens to swamp the oil market with supplies just as the coronavirus outbreak hits demand. Saudi Arabia will raise production and offer its crude at deep discounts to win new customers next month, according to two people familiar with the country’s oil policy. Oil prices fell as much as 30 per cent but later Brent trimmed losses slightly to be down 20 per cent at $36 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate traded at about $33.00 a barrel.
Michael Bloomberg has ended his bid for the White House and thrown his support behind former vice-president Joe Biden after his unprecedented half-billion-dollar campaign managed to secure only a single contest on Super Tuesday – American Samoa. “Three months ago, I entered the race for president to defeat Donald Trump. Today, I am leaving the race for the same reason: to defeat Donald Trump — because it is clear to me that staying in would make achieving that goal more difficult,” Mr Bloomberg said in a statement released on Wednesday morning by his campaign. “After yesterday’s results, the delegate math has become virtually impossible — and a viable path to the nomination no longer exists,” he added.
The Federal Reserve took charge of the global response to coronavirus on Tuesday, cutting its main policy rate by half a percentage point as the group of seven leading nations pointed to the “downside risks” from the spread of the disease. In a unanimous statement from the Fed’s Open Market Committee, the members declared “the fundamentals of the US economy remain strong”, but added that the fast-spreading virus “poses evolving risks to economic activity”. The Fed’s move — its first emergency rate cut since the peak of the global financial crisis — came after G7 finance ministers and central bank governors pledged to take “all appropriate policy tools” to maintain the economic health of the advanced world.
The prospect of a rolling monetary stimulus around the world spurred a rebound in financial markets on Monday after the Bank of Japan followed the US Federal Reserve with a vow to fight the coronavirus. In an emergency statement as markets opened on Monday morning, BoJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda promised to inject liquidity into markets and hinted at raising asset purchases, indicating the central bank is moving into crisis mode. The second pledge within days from a G7 central bank raised the prospect of co-ordinated global action to offset the spiralling economic hit from Covid-19.
Italy will inject €3.6bn into its economy to mitigate the impact of the largest outbreak of coronavirus in Europe as policymakers around the world consider the consequences of transport and supply disruptions resulting from efforts to contain the disease. Roberto Gualtieri, Italy’s economy minister, said on Sunday the government would introduce tax credits for companies that reported a 25 per cent drop in revenues, as well as tax cuts and extra cash for the health system. The package will amount to 0.2 per cent of GDP, he told La Repubblica, and would come in addition to €900m worth of measures unveiled on Friday for the most severely hit regions. Rome will simultaneously seek authorisation from Brussels to increase the budget deficit for this year, the Treasury said over the weekend.
|
PurposeMajor markets news headlines which captured the markets. Archives
March 2021
Categories |