Stocks - Wall Street off Lows, but Sea of Red Continues as Fed Steps in Again
Investing.com
Published Mar 16, 2020 12:30PM ET
By Yasin Ebrahim
Investing.com – Wall Street moved off session lows on Monday as the Federal Reserve pumped more liquidity into the market just a day after slashing rates and reverting to its financial-crisis-era bond-buying program in an attempt to keep a lid on the economic damaged from the Covid-19 outbreak.
The S&P 500 slipped 6.91%, the Nasdaq Composite lost 7.31% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 7.8%, or 1,800 points, though had fallen by as many as 2,800 points at the lows.
The New York Fed said midday Monday it would conduct a $500 billion repo operation this afternoon in a bid to shore up short-term funding markets and avert a liquidity squeeze.
The move comes a day after the Fed slashed its benchmark interest rate by 100 bps to a range of 0% to 0.25%.
The U.S. central bank also offered a number of liquidity-boosting measures, including currency swaps, along with its central banking peers like the European Central Bank and the Bank of Canada, to make it easier for financial institutions to trade currencies and receive U.S. dollars.
The wave of stimulus, however, did little calm investor jitters over the coronavirus-led impact on the economy as the trading was halted earlier in the day after the broader market plunged more than 7%.
The selloff on Wall Street comes at a time when health authorities raised concerns about the lack of testing for the virus in some nations.
"We have not seen an urgent enough escalation in testing, isolation and contact tracing, which is the backbone of the response," the World Health Organization said.
In tech, meanwhile, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) fell more than 8% after the iPhone maker said it would close all of its stores outside of China for the next two weeks to contain the spread of the coronavirus and was hit with a record $1.2 billion by French antitrust authorities. Apple and two suppliers were found to have agreed not to compete on prices and distribution.
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Written By: Investing.com
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