The world had officially surpassed 10 million coronavirus cases. The numbers continue to increase in the thousands per day in several countries. The United States is seeing a second wave of infections in some of the states that had begun easing their lockdowns and has been reporting 40,000 cases per day for the past week. Its total number of Covid-19 patients is over 2.6 million, roughly 25% of all cases worldwide.
The situation also remains dire in Brazil (1.3 million) and Russia (640,000). Latin American countries are currently experiencing widespread outbreaks as well, Peru and Chile surpassing Mexico last week and getting ahead of older epicenters such as Italy.
In the midst of negative news regarding the coronavirus, the markets remain fragile. The dominant mood right now appears to be risk-off, with a higher demand for safe assets just like last week.
Still, US stock indices today are making some modest gains because despite the large increases of new Covid-19 cases in the US, the numbers have been falling for two days and the lethality rate remains much lower than before, which is good news.
Facebook is making a lot of noise on the stock markets as its share prices are going down due to an advertising conflict. Many of the world’s largest advertisers are pulling their ads from Facebook and Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) because they want to pressure these platforms to take more steps against misinformation, fake news, hate speech, and other issues affecting Facebook’s services.
The oil market also remains interesting. Last week there was a scare that the resurgence of the coronavirus, as well as China’s current issue with oil imports, are going to hurt demand more. However, this week oil prices are eager to recover. Today the WTI climbed to $38.56, while the Brent crude reached $40.09 per barrel.
