Five Things You Need to Know to Start Your Day
Five Things You Need to Know to Start Your Day
(Bloomberg) --
Good morning. The U.S. laid out out tentative plans to reopen, China’s economy contracted and stock markets are set to bounce before the weekend. Here’s what’s moving markets.
Guidelines
U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled guidelines on reopening the country’s economy that could provide leeway for states some to scrap most social distancing measures in four weeks. It marks a significant step back from Trump’s assertion earlier in the week that he had total power to reopen states, a claim that had state governors bristling. In hard-hit New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo said he would extend the shutdown until May 15. Mayors in Chicago and Seattle are calling for more federal aid and some governors in the Midwest are teaming up to coordinate reopening plans, while the Federal Reserve is eyeing a plan to provide more transparency on its coronavirus emergency lending facilities.
Contractions
China’s gross domestic product contracted for the first time in decades in the first quarter after the outbreak of the novel coronavirus shut down huge parts of its economy, causing slumps in factory activity, investment and retail sales. Local markets largely brushed off the data but the other area to watch is China’s move to revise higher the number of virus-related deaths in the Wuhan province. That comes amid heavy criticism from the U.S. about a lack of transparency on this front and with the U.K. having said that a return to business-as-usual relations with China will be difficult after this tumultuous period.
Restrictions
As we move into the weekend, a quick summary of where Europe stands on Covid-19, with increasing cases clouding plans to ease restrictions. The U.K. extended its lockdown for at least another three weeks as the infection rate has not yet fallen far enough, but made clear it won't countenance a delay to Brexit. New deaths in France declined for the first time in four days, Spain is planning a minimum living wage to help its poorest citizens and Germany is readying for some restrictions on public life to be lifted from next week. Chancellor Angela Merkel also defended the World Health Organization following Trump’s attacks.
Responses
Fiscal and monetary responses will be increasingly scrutinized as the true devastation the pandemic has caused is laid bare in economic data, like the 22 million people in the U.S. who have lost their jobs in four weeks. The European Union is looking to increase its budget firepower to find its way around the disagreements on issuing coronabonds and the European Central Bank will do “ everything necessary” to help the economy. In the U.S., the Federal Reserve is open to providing more emergency aid to virus-hit sectors, albeit while issuing a downbeat view on the economic outlook.
Coming Up…
The tentative steps being made by the U.S. to reopen buoyed Asian markets and we head into Friday with European and U.S. stock futures pointing definitively higher. Investors will be mulling over the updates from luxury giant LVMH and cosmetics group L’Oreal SA which came after Europe’s close on Thursday, with both suggesting that a recovery from the virus-driven slump could start soon. Watch too for anything further from Gilead Sciences Inc., with the drugmaker surging after a report saying its remdesivir product is proving successful in early trials battling Covid-19. Oil is stuck near recent lows as a weak demand outlook outweighs all else.
What We’ve Been Reading
This is what’s caught our eye over the past 24 hours.
- Humbled hedge fund hotshots.
- What to expect when you go back to the office.
- Contactless payments are rocketing.
- Recruiting dogs to sniff out Covid-19.
- More cars, fewer trains in post-virus travel.
- ‘ Intentional Communities’, the Earth-friendly neighborhoods of the future.
- Parenting anxious children in an anxious age.
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