A rally in European stocks that took the STOXX 600 index up 3% in morning trading has extended to New York. At noon New York Time today, the Standard & Poor’s 500 was up 5.65% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was ahead 5.66%. The NASDAQ Composite had gained 5.47% and the Russell 2000 had climbed 6.67%. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) was higher by 5.15%.
All this on news that the rate of new infections in Europe continues to slow. Spain’s Health Ministry announced 4,273 new cases of the coronavirus, an increase of only 3.3%, down from 4.8% on Sunday. a day earlier. Italy’s daily growth rate in new coronavirus cases dropped to around 3.5% on Sunday.
Which has already led some European countries to relax their coronavirus restrictions. Austria, for example has said that it will reopen some nonessential shops next week.
Exactly what any easing of social distancing measures would look like remains up in the air. Denmark, for example, has indicated that businesses and events, even if reopened, would need to be run differently than in the past to prevent a second wave of infections. “We will not return to Denmark as it was before March 6,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. But exactly what the means for Danes–or anyone else–remains unknown.
Today in New York trading gold was up 2.69% to $1690 an ounce. Silver had gained 3.46% to $15.00 an ounce.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury was up to 0.66% as bond prices fell on the stock market rally. The yield on the 2-year Treasury was 0.25%. On Friday the 10-year yield as 0.57% and the 2-year yield was 0.21%.
