Last Friday, the European markets were rebounding on the hopes that the coronavirus was being contained, that China was putting more cities on lockdown, and that the WHO had stopped short of announcing a global emergency.
Now those fears have come back with a vengeance. A weekend full of increasingly alarming headlines about jumping death tolls and known cases rising into the thousands – one expert has claimed there could be as many as 100,000 affected by the virus, a figure that dwarfs the official number – has sent the global markets reeling.
With its major miners and banks in the red – Rio Tinto (LON:RIO) fell 4.1%, Anglo American (LON:AAL) 3.9% and HSBC (LON:HSBA) 2.7% – the FTSE 100 suffered a sharp 1.5% dive, forcing the UK index below 7500 for the first time since mid-December.
The situation in the Eurozone wasn’t any better. The DAX, oh so briefly at all-time highs last week, found itself at a 2-and-a-half week low of 13400 as it shed 180 points, while the CAC 40 tumbled to 5930 after a 1.4% drop.
As for the Dow Jones, by the end of Friday it had reversed the gains seen during the European section of the session, falling under 29000. It is set to continue that decline this afternoon, the futures eyeing a 275 point plunge, the index not only suffering from the coronavirus fears, but news of rockets hitting the US embassy in Baghdad.
It was, last week, unclear whether the outbreak was becoming the next major market story, or if it would rumble on in the background. Now, despite the next few days bringing a Fed statement, Mark Carney’s final meeting as Bank of England governor, and the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, it seems like it is going to be hard to pull investors’ attentions away from the progress of the virus.
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