Dow caps worst first quarter of its 135-year history with a 400-point slide
Source: Washington Post
Wall Street concluded one of its worst-ever starts to a year on Tuesday with markets staggering under trillions in losses from an economy paralyzed by the coronavirus. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged more 400 points, or roughly 1.9 percent, for the worst first quarter finish of its 135-year history. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index also neared historic lows.
Analyst warned earlier in the week that volatility could dominate the final days of the first quarter and first weeks of the second. And with wild swings on Tuesday, the markets proved those predictions correct, a marker of how confounded investors appear as the covid-19 economic crisis takes a fuller form.
Traders earlier Tuesday were buoyed in the short term by better-than-expected readings on a wounded economy. Consumer confidence fell from 132.6 to 120 when experts expected a steeper decline. Goldman Sachs revised expectations for the rest of the fiscal year, predicting as much as 15 percent unemployment due to the novel coronavirus outbreak, but also a rapid economic rebound.
“Near term volatility was lower in recent days, but longer-dated volatility has remained relatively stable,” said Lauren Goodwin, an economist and multi-asset portfolio strategist at New York Life Investments. “To us, this means [Monday’s] equity rally is a part of short-term optimism, not the end of market volatility. Investors are buying into the market, but they are more cautious with respect to longer-term opportunities.”
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/03/31/stocks-markets-today-coronavirus/
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