Key Weekly Data Points – week commencing 27/04/2020

Daniel Casali provides a round-up of key market activity during the week of 27th April.

Monday 27th

• Spain saw a large jump in its number of recovered COCVI-19 patients over the weekend, with a reported 22,000 recoveries. Germany and France continued to report positive data with active cases in Germany declining by -3% and active case growth in France close to 0%.
• UK coronavirus deaths passed the 20,000 mark over the weekend. FT analysis suggests that the global death toll could, in fact, be 60% more than reported.
• Chinese Industrial Profits dropped -34.9% in March this compared, compared to March 2019.

Tuesday 28th

• The Bank of Japan opened the gates for unlimited money-printing as it removed its guide of only buying 80 trillion yen (£59bn) of government bonds a year.
• Italian car sales crash by -98% in March, year-on-year.

Wednesday 29th

• The US economy contracted in Q1’20 at an annualised rate of 4.8%, its largest since 2008 due to country wide lockdown measures.
• The Federal Reserve has pledged to keep interest rates close to zero until economic normality resumes, especially regarding inflation and employment.

Thursday 30th

• 30m American have now lost their jobs because of COVID-19. 3.8m new Americans filed for unemployment benefits this week.
• The ECB will continue lending to banks at exceptionally low interests as the Eurozone economy shrank 3.8% year on year in Q1’20, a larger contraction than during the 2008 financial crisis.
• This comes after the president of the ECB, Christine Lagarde warned EU leaders that Eurozone GDP could fall by 15% this year, the FT reported.

Friday 1st

• India’s largest car maker, Maruti Suzuki, has said that the company did not sell or manufacture a single car during April.
• Despite deteriorating economic conditions across the globe, the US markets recorded some of their biggest monthly gains. In April, the S&P rose 12.7% and NASDAQ 15.2%.
• Shell has cut its dividend for the first time since WWII as the collapse in oil price led to a fall in earnings.

Source: Bloomberg.com

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