Move FM Global News

NEW YORK, New York – Selling on Wall Street appears to have been stemmed for now as investors with traders re-assessing the prospects for the world economy in the months ahead. Cruiselines, and airline industry stocks made heady gains.

The world is no longer falling apart appeared to be a general consensus as the Dow Jones and Standard and Poor’s 500 marched higher on Wednesday. The Nasdaq dipped.

“What the fiscal and monetary stimulus has done is to allow the market to recover,” Justin Hoogendoorn, head of fixed income strategy at Piper Jaffray in Chicago told Reuters Thomson Wednesday. “It’s not because the main street community is coming back. It’s the institutional crowd being able to say, ‘the world isn’t falling apart’.”

Failure so far of the Congress to agree on the proposed $2 trillion support package was a dampener on sentiment.

President Donald Trump at his daily press briefing on Covid-19 said the United States was now doing more testing than any other country. “We are doing more in 8 days than they are doing in 8 weeks he said,” without clarifying who ‘they’ is. The accuracy of the claim has not been independently verified.

Cruise lines came back into favour, with Norwegian and Royal Caribbean both gaining 23%. Airlines were higher, and Boeing soared another 24%, taking its gains this week to 70%.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 2.39% higher at 21,200.55.

The Standard and Poor’s 500 added 1.15% to 2,475.56.

The Nasdaq Composite declined 0.45% to 7,384.30.

The U.S. dollar was sold off against the major currencies. The euro climbed to 1.0879. The British pound rose to 1.1885.

The Japanese yen edged up to 111.19. The Swiss franc firmed to 0.9760.

The Canadian dollar rallied to 1.4192.

The Australian dollar however went against the trend, giving up the 0.6000 cent level it hurdled earlier in the day, to finish around 0.5958.

The New Zealand dollar eased to 0.5847.

On overseas markets, the FTSE 100 in London strengthened by 4.45%. The German Dax advanced to 1.79%. In Paris, the CAC 40 added 4.47%.

On Asian markets, the Nikkei 225 jumped 1,454.28 points or 8.04% to 19,546.63.

The Australian All Ordinaries rallied 252.90 points or 5.32% to 5,006.20.

China’s Shanghai Composite gained 59.15 points or 2.17% to 2,781.59.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng appreciated 863.70 points or 3.81% to 23,527.19.