- Dow Jones Industrial Average, DJIA, climbed 1,171 points, or 4.5%, to end around 27,090.
- The S&P 500 added 4.2% and the NASDAQ added 3.9%.
US Benchmarks ended on Wednesday a great deal higher following what appears to be a centralised effort by bankers to address the outbreak of COVID-19 on an economic standpoint. We have seen the Reserve Bank of Australia, Federal Reserve and the Bank of Canada as the latest central bank to join the rate-cutting syndicate and US lawmakers putting together a huge package of funding to battle the crisis. At the same time, former Vice President Joe Biden won in Super Tuesday election contests which have started to clear the way for the Democratic nominee to go head to head with the incumbent President Donald Trump.
Consequently, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, DJIA, climbed 1,171 points, or 4.5%, to end around 27,090, pulling back all of the 800 points lost in the prior session. The DJIA marked up its second gain of at least one thousand points for the 124-year-old equity index. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 added 4.2% and the NASDAQ added 3.9%.
In company news, stocks of UnitedHealth Group Inc were the biggest gainers in the Dow, closing up almost 11% following Biden's lead over Democratic rival Bernie Sanders. In other news, US lawmakers decided upon an $8 billion response to the coronavirus, approving more than $3 billion for developing treatments for COVID-19 and $2.2 billion for containment.
US data on the mend
Another attributing factor for good news for Wall Street today came in the US data. The rise in the US ISM non-manufacturing index from 55.5 to 57.3 in February ran counter to the recent Markit services report. "It was a one year high for the index. New orders rose to 63.1 vs 56.2. It will be important to watch the March data post the equity markets slump and Fed cut. Recent events suggest risks are strongly to the downside," analysts at ANZ Bank explained. We also saw construction growing with the ADP jobs rising 183k in Feb, broadly in line with the 170k consensus. There was a -82k downward revision to Jan's number to 209k.
DJIA levels
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