Global markets are mixed Thursday, with Asia beginning the day sustaining serious losses due more pandemic-imposed gloom.
The S&P/ASX in Sydney had the biggest losses in the region, plunging 2.5%, and Japan’s Nikkei index lost 1.2% for the day. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped 0.5%, while Shanghai’s Composite gained 0.3%.
Seoul’s KOSPI index lost 2.2%, but Taiwan’s TSEC index rose 0.4%. The Sensex in Mumbai was fluctuating in late afternoon trading.
The situation was much better in Europe, with the FTSE index in London up 0.2%, Paris’s CAC-40 0.4% higher, and Frankfurt’s DAX index up one percent.
Oil markets are falling Thursday. U.S. crude oil is selling at $37.79 per barrel, down 0.5%, and Brent crude trading at $40.20 per barrel, down 0.2%.
The mixed situation is due to more bad news about COVID-19 from the United States, which posted more than 36,000 new coronavirus cases Wednesday, the highest one-day number of new cases since late April. Most of the numbers came out of Florida and Texas, both of which posted over 5,000 new cases, and California, which posted a staggering 7,000 total new cases — a record day for all three populous states. The news led to all three major U.S. indexes posting losses of well over 2%.
And Wall Street is likely to get off to a bad start Thursday, with the Dow Jones, S&P 500 and NASDAQ all trending downward in futures trading.
