Live Stock Market Updates as Day Closes

March 16, 2020
Business

There was one other nasty dip along the way: In late 2018, investors grew increasingly worried about Mr. Trump’s trade war with China and the prospect that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates.

Stocks climbed 28.9 percent last year, thanks largely to the Fed’s decision to reverse course.

On Thursday, the SP 500 had its worst day in more than 30 years, dropping 9.5 percent. The next day, it rallied late, making up most — but not all — the ground it had just lost, after Mr. Trump declared the pandemic a national emergency.

Though stocks have now given up about half their gains since the president was elected, the SP 500 would have to fall another 18 percent for the entire Trump bump to be erased.

Catch up: Here’s what else is happening.

Europe’s auto industry is coming to a standstill. PSA, the maker of Peugeot and Citroën cars, said it would suspend production at all of its factories in Europe. Renault is closing its French factories, idling 18,000 workers, and Fiat Chrysler is also shutting factories.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Monday that the Trump administration’s most immediate priority was making sure that small businesses had sufficient funds to stay afloat as the coronavirus outbreak shuts down large swaths of the economy. However, he said that the administration did not want to resort to bailouts.
Shares of the largest banks in the United States were hit particularly hard on Monday, with JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley all down around 13 percent. On Sunday, the eight largest U.S. banks announced that they would suspend buybacks of their stock — a move that would help them keep cash on hand in case conditions in the financial markets grew unstable.
The falling price of crude is being reflected at the gasoline pump. The U.S. average price for regular gasoline fell 13 cents a gallon over the last week, according to the AAA motor club, to $2.25 a gallon. Eleven states now average below $2 a gallon.

Peter S. Goodman, Amie Tsang, Jeanna Smialek, Niraj Chokshi, Ben Dooley, Isabella Kwai, Daniel Victor, Carlos Tejada, Niraj Chokshi, Clifford Krauss, Jim Tankersley, Peter Baker, Sapna Maheshwari, Natalie Kitroeff, Keith Bradsher, Ben Casselman, Vanessa Friedman, Jack Ewing, Stanley Reed, Jack Nicas, Liz Alderman, Brooks Barnes, Nicole Sperling, David Yaffe-Bellany and Matt Phillips contributed reporting.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/16/business/stock-market-today-coronavirus.html