Bailouts  Another big week. Over the weekend, the coronavirus stimulus bill failed to pass in the Senate and the news sent futures to “limit down.” But before the market opened on Monday morning, the Fed announced limitless quantitate easing, which gave markets a little room to breathe while Congress continued working toward a resolution. Several states ordered “stay at home” ordinances, shutting down more and more of the US economy. But Congress finally passed a the much-awaited $2t coronavirus relief bill and stocks surged 18% over three days through Thursday. Moral of the story: The stimulus package contains carve-outs targeting individuals, small businesses, unemployment, and hospitals, to name a few. The full economic benefit, however,…

What happened this week  Market volatility continued for the large part this week after the Fed cut interest rates to basically zero on Sunday and launched a $700 billion quantitative easing program. Here’s the breakdown of the week’s main events –  Monday: Stocks fell precipitously at the beginning of trading and triggered the circuit breakers again. Government-mandated shutdowns were announced in NY, NJ, CT, and San Fran. The US airlines asked for over $50 billion in government aid. Canada closed it borders to non-citizens. US cases were at 4,643 and deaths were at 85. Stocks closed down 12% in the third worst day ever.  Tuesday: The Fed launched a short-term funding program for businesses. The EU closed its borders. The Trump administration…

Roller-coaster central  If you’re a basketball fan and looking for something else to fill your NBA and NCAA entertainment void, I highly recommend watching business TV (CNBC, Bloomberg, etc.) because WOW unending madness happening in the stock market right now. Here’s a summary of the week that took ~10 years off my life expectancy: Monday: Over the weekend, a conflict between Saudi Arabia and Russia on market share for oil led to plummeting oil prices (over -20% type of plummeting), which added another major blow to the already coronavirus-plagued stock markets. US stocks tumbled so much as soon as the market opened on Monday morning that trading was halted for 15 minutes. Stocks closed down…

Circus  Coronavirus worries dominated headlines but two other major events rocked the boat. First, the Fed announced an emergency 0.50% interest rate cut to provide support to the economy through coronavirus impacts. The last time the Fed did something like this was in the last recession, so while the actions may have been to support the business environment, it was reminiscent of unhappy times. Second, Super Tuesday proved to be a massive comeback for Joe Biden. After the events of the week, the last two standing in the Democratic race are Sanders and Biden. Given the moderate vote is no longer divided between multiple candidates, the market reacted well to…

The worst week since 2008 What a bloodbath. US stocks lost over $3 trillion in market value in the worst week the stock market has seen since 2008 (aka the Global Financial Crisis). The phenomenon wasn’t just felt for US stocks – commodities, currencies, and global stock markets all tumbled this week. The damage collectively is sickening.  What happened? The coronavirus. I think I referred to it as corona lite virus at one point and I want to confirm that was a joke, it’s not actually related to the beer – apparently searches for “corona beer virus” and “beer coronavirus” have become quite widespread (**insert face palm emoji**). And to some extent Bernie Sanders leading the…