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Happy Friday, everyone. The trading week is ending with a thud. For the second consecutive day, red is dominating the screens.
What’s moving markets? Coronavirus, containment concerns, and the coming—gulp—market correction.
Markets update
Again today the Asian and European markets are down, as are the U.S. futures. So much for that bad-one-day, good-the next “W” trading cycle we’d been seeing.
It’s all about the virus. We’ve reached a new phase in the coronavirus outbreak as contagions flare outside China—the worrying flash-points today are in Japan, South Korea and Australia. Overall, infections have now topped 76,000. What it all means is that hopes of containment are fading. Fast.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng sank the most on the jitters, down more than 1% on Friday. Brent crude is down even further, and the Dow and S&P 500 appear set to extend yesterday’s losses even further.
As we do every Friday, let’s now take a look at the big numbers of the week.
By the numbers
$1,636.20. That’s the price of gold per troy ounce, a seven-year high. The shiny yellow stuff is up nearly 1% today, and up 7.4% year-to-date. Whenever you see a run on gold like this it almost always means uncertainty in the markets is sky-high. Earlier, I pointed out that tech stocks were actually outperforming gold. But the two are now beginning to trend in opposite directions.
10%. Bulls, you’re not going to like this next data point. Goldman Sachs’ Peter Oppenheimer has warned investors in a note that a stock market correction “is looking more probable.” He believes investors are underestimating the coronavirus impact on corporate earnings. If his analysis is correct, that means a 10% drop from the markets peak. What would that look like? Let’s take the S&P 500. A correction would take the index back down to just above 3,000, or a 340-point drop. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, meanwhile, would drop to about 26,600. On the bright side, he notes, it’s merely a correction, not that we’re nearing bear territory (a 20% drop).
19.78. Since Apple dropped its bombshell sales warning on Monday, the Nasdaq has had a choppy ride. Based on Thursday’s close, it’s up a sliver this week, by 19.78 points. Don’t get too complacent. That meager gain could easily get wiped out at the opening bell today. As noted above, investors have not yet fully taken into account the full coronavirus impact on earnings in coming quarters. It’s not as if companies are hiding the news. Here’s a short-list of the companies (beyond Apple) that have issued coronavirus warnings this week: Procter & Gamble, Alibaba, Adidas, Puma, Foxconn, Qantas, Air France-KLM and Moller-Maersk, the world’s biggest shipping company. They join luxury brands, energy stocks, etc., etc.
***
To end on a positive note—it’s Friday. Have a nice weekend, everyone.
I’ll see you back here on Monday.
Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com
Today's reads
Accounts scandal. Wells Fargo & Co is close to reaching a $3 billion settlement of federal probes into a range of consumer abuses. The Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission may announce penalties as early as Friday. A series of scandals at the San Francisco-based bank date back to 2016, when the bank conceded that employees may have opened millions of fake accounts to meet sales goals.
Call your broker. Morgan Stanley is making its biggest acquisition since the financial crisis, agreeing to buy discount brokerage E*Trade Financial Corp. for $13 billion. The all-stock takeover strengthens the investment bank’s position in the retail market, adding E*Trade’s $360 billion of client assets to Morgan Stanley’s $2.7 trillion. Morgan Stanley also gets E*Trade’s direct-to-consumer and digital capabilities.
Pricey lingerie. L Brands is selling a controlling stake in Victoria's Secret after 82-year-old billionaire founder Les Wexner proved unable to repair the once iconic lingerie brand, Fortune’s Phil Wahba reports. The company, a leading mall-based store operator, said Thursday it was selling a 55% stake in Victoria's Secret for $525 million to retail-focused private equity firm Sycamore Partners.
Market candy
Quiz time. Which recent IMF-bailout recipient has seen yields on its 10-year government bonds dip below 1%, cheaper even than 10-year U.S. Treasurys? Is it:
- A. Ukraine
- B. Greece
- C. Argentina
- D. Pakistan
The answer is Greece, which has achieved a stunning economic turnaround from the painful decade-long debt crisis that forced it to seek repeated bailouts from the IMF and euro zone governments. Now the country’s economy is growing at around 2%, beating many of its European peers, and the yield on 10-year Greek bonds, which peaked at more than 30% in 2012, has fallen to an amazingly low 0.97%.