Stocks Plunge,With Dow in Bear Market: Live Updates

President Trump has signaled he would consider ways to stimulate the economy, and lawmakers and administration officials spent the day Wednesday outlining their possible steps. Options include cutting payroll taxes and extending the American tax filing deadline past April 15. But so far, the White House has not announced any specific measures, and most experts say a payroll tax cut is not an effective way to combat the problems facing the economy.

“What we’ve seen over the past 36 hours is hope for something from a fiscal policy perspective and then this sense that this it’s not going to come, or it’s not thought out, so I think that’s the disappointment right now,” said William Delwiche, an investment strategist at Baird, an investment banking and money-management firm based in Milwaukee.

That the virus is unlikely to prove fatal to the vast majority of people who get it offers little comfort to financial markets. Rather, the worry is that efforts to contain the spread of the illness caused by the virus are certain to slow the global economy and corporate profits.

In a note to clients on Wednesday, strategists at Goldman Sachs predicted that SP 500 would fall to about 2,450 over the next three months — a further drop of about 10 percent from where the index stood on Wednesday afternoon, as corporate profits tumble.

The price of benchmark American crude oil fell again, after the Saudi Arabian state oil company said for the second time this week that it would expand production capacity.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/business/stock-market-today.html