Stocks - Dow Ends Week Lower Despite Trump-Infused Friday Rally

By Yasin Ebrahim 

Investing.com – Wall Street ended the week down substantially despite a huge rally into the close on Friday after President Donald Trump declared a national emergency, a move that gives him authority to use federal funds to combat the coronavirus outbreak.

The S&P 500 soared 9.3% today. It was up 4.1% before the speech. The Nasdaq Composite gained 9.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 9.4%, up 1,985 points. The S&P and Dow ended the week down 9% and 10% respectively.

Trump said the move would "open access to up to $50 billion" in funds for states and municipalities to tackle the pandemic.

The declaration from Trump was largely expected amid growing calls on Capitol Hill for the president to use the law to free up funds to assist Americans affected by the outbreak and ramp up testing.

The rebound in the broader market following its worst one-day rout since 1987 was driven by financials, mostly banks, underpinned by a rise in Treasury yields.

Banking stocks like JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), which benefit from the boost to net interest income form higher interest rose sharply, with the latter up more than 14%.

Tech was also up sharply as bargain-hunting investors piled into beaten-down FANG stocks, while chip stocks also enjoyed a strong rally, though ended the week down 9%.

Energy, one of the worst hit sectors, was given a boost as Trump said he had authorized refilling the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve "right up to the top," a move that could provide some support for oil prices.

The strong end to the day on Wall Street comes during a week in which the Dow plunged to its biggest one-day percentage slump since 1987 on Thursday, despite the Federal Reserve pumping more than $1.5 billion of liquidity in the market. 

The Fed said it would conduct three $500 billion tranches of term repos - two for three-months and one for one-month - to support financial market functioning. The central bank has railed against suggestions that its monthly $60 billion T-bills purchases -- initiated in October last year to avert a repeat of a spike in overnight lending rates seen last September --  are a new form of quantitative easing because it as limited to short-term securities.  

But earlier this week the Fed extended those purchase “across a range of maturities” to include bills, notes, Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities as well as other instruments. 

Still, despite the monetary and fiscal stimulus measures seen this week, the future of the global economy remains bleak, with some on Wall Street warning of a virus-led recession.

"COVID-19 is expected to roll through the global economy over February, March, and April, generating GDP contractions in most countries for at least one of the two quarters it straddles," said Bruce Kasman, J.P. Morgan’s chief economist. "If our current forecast is realized it seems appropriate to characterize it as a novel-global recession."   

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