Today the world has recorded 13.2 million coronavirus cases. The United States continues to be the place with the worst outbreak in the world, again recording over 65,000 new Covid-19 infections yesterday, towards a total of 3.48 million. The US Sun belt is now experiencing a worse outbreak than New York City, which was the worst affected area before the first set of lockdowns.
In this context, the state of California is beginning a new lockdown. Other states currently seeing large increases of Covid-19 cases might follow suit and disobey the White House in reinstating lockdowns again. Therefore, investors fear that economic activity in the United States will be disturbed for much longer than anticipated earlier.
Brazil is approaching 2 million cases, while India is close to 1 million, and Russia remains a major epicenter of the virus as well. South Africa continues to add record numbers of new infections daily and is likely far from the outbreak’s peak still.
Moreover, today there will be important earnings reports from the United States’ chief banks. These reports will likely put the market into perspective and provide more realistic data about the economy at the moment. Thus, they will likely affect risk sentiment, most probably pushing investors towards safe havens.
The stock market will be caught in the middle between the pandemic and the earnings reports. It was badly hurt yesterday due to the coronavirus complications and today it is correcting positively, but then the earnings could push it in the red again.
Meanwhile, today the oil market is stabilizing somewhat around the level of $39.77 for the WTI brand and $42.47 for the Brent crude.
