The global economic sentiment today is rather pessimistic. The resurgence of the coronavirus and the inability of some countries to contain their respective outbreaks, plus the lack of enough stimulus in the United States, are all contributing to a grim picture with very little hope of a fast economic recovery.
The total number of coronavirus cases around the world has surpassed 32 million. Of those, nearly 7.2 million have been in the United States alone. The US is reporting daily increases that are lower than the mid-summer records, but has been unable to consistently get the daily infection rate below 30,000.
India is the second most-affected country with over 5.8 million Covid-19 infections. Nevertheless, after the outbreak peaked at around 97,000 new cases per day earlier in September, now things appear to be slowing down. In the past week India has reported daily increases under 90,000.
Brazil comes in third with 4.6 million coronavirus cases, having reported 32,000 new ones yesterday. Recent statistics have been consistently lower than the July peaks, so the pandemic appears to be dying down in Brazil. Still, other South American countries such as Argentina are still in the midst of the first wave.
Meanwhile, Europe is struggling with the second wave of the pandemic. France reported its highest daily increase yesterday. Spain’s numbers are worrisome, and the United Kingdom is seeing a rapid increase despite the latest containment measures implemented by the government. Germany and Italy are also seeing more cases, but their numbers remain well below the first wave records.
Due to the coronavirus situation, the stock markets are not performing well. Safe havens like the US dollar and the Japanese yen are doing much better. Still, for those interested in company shares, Amazon is the biggest one to watch out for, as the tech giant announced it will also start providing cloud gaming services, where it will compete with Google and Nvidia.
Apple is also a big name to follow at the moment, as the company’s legal battles in Europe are going to continue. Even though Apple won a case in the European court earlier this year, now the EU Commission is going to appeal the ruling and ask for the case to be looked at again. If Apple loses the appeal, it will have to pay 15 billion USD in taxes.
