Live Stock Market Updates: Wall Street Faces More Turmoil – The New York Times

Stocks were volatile on Thursday as policymakers in the United States and Europe took more steps to offset the sharp decline gripping their economies.

The S&P 500 climbed into positive territory after earlier having fallen more than 3 percent. Shares in Europe also recovered after trading lower for most of the day. Oil prices, which had fallen by more than 20 percent on Wednesday, rebounded on Thursday.

The uneven trading followed a steep drop across financial markets on Wednesday and came as the steady drumbeat of bad news about the spread of the coronavirus continued. Speaking at a White House press briefing, President Trump acknowledged that the economy would experience a rapid fall before it climbs back. He also touted efforts to speed up the approval of potential treatments for Covid-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus.

“I believe in the V curve,” Mr. Trump said, referring to how some economists describe a sharp falloff and rebound in economic growth. “When this is defeated, this hidden scourge is defeated, I think we’re going to go up very rapidly.”

In the United States, the number of workers filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance surged, government data released on Thursday showed. Those figures don’t reflect the sharp cutbacks that have taken place in the past few days as companies quickly scale down operations as efforts to contain the coronavirus keep consumers at home and force factories to close.

Overnight, the European Central Bank unveiled a huge bond-buying program aimed at preventing economic calamity, and the Fed presented a plan to support money market funds, which are threatened when there is a rush for cash. U.S. officials neared passage of stimulus efforts to keep the American economy running. The Bank of England on Thursday announced that it would lower its benchmark interest rate to 0.1 percent and increase its buying of U.K. government bonds and corporate bonds.

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that the White House’s economic relief plan includes sending checks to the public of $1,000 for every American adult and $500 per child within three weeks. If the crisis continues, the plan would be to send checks of the same amounts again in May.

But news of efforts to bolster the economy has been matched by a sharp escalation in the number of coronavirus cases in Europe and the United States, and fresh evidence of the impact on businesses. On Thursday, Ford Motor said that it would suspend its dividend payment and draw down about $15 billion from two lines of credit to help offset the impact of coronavirus-related production shutdowns, becoming just the latest company to take such measures in order to cushion itself.

The waves of selling in the past month have left the Dow Jones industrial average back where it stood in January 2017, as President Trump took office — erasing the gains that had become one of his primary measures of success in the White House.

Economists in recent days have made increasingly dire predictions about the likely damage to the job market, with many predicting that the unemployment rate will quickly surpass the 10 percent level it hit in the worst of the last recession.

“This is a body blow to the economy unlike anything we’ve experienced in recent memory,” said Patrick Anderson, an economist in East Lansing, Mich. “Even the Great Recession did not include shuttering of businesses by government order at the same time that people were being told to say home and distance themselves.”

Layoffs rose sharply last week as the effects of the coronavirus pandemic began to ripple through the economy. The worst is yet to come.

Some 281,000 Americans filed first-time claims for unemployment insurance, up by 33 percent from 211,000 the week before, the Labor Department said Thursday. On a percentage basis, the increase was among the largest one-week spikes on record.

The Labor Department said the increase was “clearly attributable to impacts from the COVID-19 virus” and noted that many states reported a rise in jobless claims from workers in food services, accommodation and travel.

Still, the data released Thursday was for claims filed from March 8-14, before the outbreak began to shut down restaurants, bars and retail stores in much of the country. The next report, which will reflect the first wave of closings, will almost certainly be much worse.

The Federal Reserve said Thursday it would extend currency swap lines to nine additional countries, an attempt to keep dollars flowing to banks around the world as the coronavirus disrupts every aspect of business, creating a cash crunch in many nations.

The Fed has a history of creating swap lines to help foreign central banks deliver U.S. dollar funding to financial institutions in their regions amid market stress. Such agreements were used extensively during the 2008 financial crisis. Indeed, the new arrangements are with the same countries the Fed struck such agreements with during that crisis: Singapore, South Korea, Brazil, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Norway and Denmark.

It’s the latest in a series of steps by the central bank to keep the financial system functioning and prop up the economy as it spirals toward recession during the coronavirus pandemic. Late Wednesday night, the Fed said that it would offer emergency loans to money market mutual funds,

Officials said they would establish a so-called Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility, which would be backed by $10 billion from the Treasury Department. That facility joins a similar lending program for banks, established earlier this week.

General Motors and Ford Motor have told the White House that they would be willing to produce ventilators if the administration was interested in mobilizing private businesses to manufacture equipment needed to respond to the coronavirus.

Neither company has detailed plans to produce the devices and said the discussions were preliminary. In a statement, G.M. said the topic came up on Wednesday when the company’s chief executive, Mary T. Barra, called to inform the White House that G.M. had decided to temporarily shut down plants to prevent the spread of the disease among workers.

Separately, Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, said on Twitter that his electric car company would also produce ventilators “if there is a shortage.” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio responded soon after, saying that the city was interested in purchasing ventilators and “could use your help.”

The discussions about automakers making ventilators hark back to World War II, when G.M., Ford, Chrysler, and other manufacturers stopped producing automobiles and switched to weapons and other war-related supplies. Ford famously produced B-24 bombers at the Willow Run plant near Ypsilanti, Mich. G.M. made Sherman tanks as well as planes, guns and other weapons.

As the effects of the coronavirus pandemic spread across the country last week, Americans grew increasingly worried about the impact the outbreak would have both on them individually and on the economy.

Fifty-nine percent of Americans last week said they were somewhat or very worried that they or a family member would be exposed to the virus, according to a poll conducted for The New York Times by the online research firm SurveyMonkey. That’s up from 49 percent who said the same a week earlier. Eighty-four percent said they were worried about the outbreak’s effect on the economy, up from 73 percent in the first week of March.

Americans grew more nervous as the week progressed: In interviews conducted from Monday to Thursday, 80 percent of respondents said they were concerned about the economy. From Friday through Sunday, that number rose to 85 percent.

Survey respondents have also become more confident in President Trump’s handling of the crisis. In the first week of March, 47 percent said they approved of his performance; last week, 53 percent said so.

As Uber ridership has vanished, the company is seeking to reassure investors about how it will fare.

Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s chief executive, told investors during a conference call on Monday morning that Uber was preparing multiple models to gauge how it would fare as the pandemic continues, and that it had about $10 billion cash on hand to weather the storm.

“Our business is incredibly resilient and will bounce back,” Mr. Khosrowshahi said. “In some parts of our business, we are already seeing what we believe is the worst of the impact behind us.”

Uber did not update its revenue guidance, but revealed that in Hong Kong, rides had fallen by 45 percent from the previous year at the height of the outbreak there, before recovering slightly to a 30 percent decline. In Seattle, rides were down between 60 and 70 percent.

As household incomes feel the impact of the economic crisis from the coronavirus outbreak, there has been a groundswell of moves across the country to protect renters from eviction.

The Miami-Dade police in Florida said they wouldn’t carry out evictions. A New York State judge declared that the courts would consider no eviction cases until further notice. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California issued an executive order allowing cities to impose eviction moratoriums.

“The very least policymakers can do during a national health emergency is ensure that more people are not pushed into homelessness,” said Diane Yentel, chief executive of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington.

On Wednesday, the federal agency overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant government-run finance firms that back the mortgages of 28 million homeowners, ordered a suspension of foreclosures and foreclosure-related evictions for at least two months.

• The European Central Bank will embark on an enormous wave of bond purchases intended to counter the “serious risks” to the eurozone caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The bank will buy up to 750 billion euros, or $820 billion, in government and corporate bonds and other assets, pumping cash into financial markets deeply rattled by the pandemic.

• A reliable predictor of German economic growth, the Ifo Institute’s monthly survey of business managers, suffered its biggest plunge since eastern and western Germany reunited almost three decades ago.

• Burberry, the British luxury fashion brand known for its trench coats and plaid, expects store sales to plunge as much as 80 percent. Though the initial losses were in Asia, the company said sales in the Americas, where over 85 percent of its stores are closed, and in Europe, Middle East, Africa and India, where over 60 percent are shut, are “materially” lower.

Reporting and research were contributed by Ben Casselman, Conor Dougherty, Emily Flitter, Isabella Kwai, Jack Ewing, Neal E. Boudette, Carlos Tejada, Kate Conger, Jason Karaian, Amie Tsang, Heather Murphy, Matt Phillips, Jeanna Smialek, Jim Tankersley, Mohammed Hadi and Katie Robertson.