U.S. Stocks Mixed After Initial Jobless Claims Release

U.S. Initial Jobless Claims Show Major Increase In Unemployment

U.S. Initial Jobless Claims release showed that 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits. Last week’s number was revised from 6.6 million to 6.9 million. The analyst concensus called for an increase of 5.25 million but estimates varied widely.

In the past three weeks, almost 16 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits. The economy is losing jobs at an unprecedented pace, but it remains to be seen whether the market will react negatively to the news since previous reports were also dismal but did not prevent stocks from showing upside.

World Leaders Start To Think About Reopening Economies

According to data from Johns Hopkins University, there are 432,438 coronavirus cases in the U.S., 152,446 cases in Spain, 139,422 cases in Italy and 113,296 cases in Germany.

While the total numbers are big, the pace of contagion is slowing down, especially in Europe, which entered the crisis earlier than U.S. In this light, it’s not surprising that governments start to prepare their early plans on how to reopen economies that received a mighty blow from virus containment measures.

Germany stated that a gradual return to normal life was possible if the current trend continued and that the country will look at the situation after the Easter holidays.

As per Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, the country may gradually lift existing restrictions by the end of April. The U.S. President Donald Trump is optimistic as usual and wants to see the U.S. economy reopen with a ‘big bang’. However, it’s still too early to tell when this will happen.

OPEC+ Talks Begin

Oil is experiencing a choppy trading session as traders and investors try to guess whether oil producing countries will reach consensus today. A lot is at stake since coronavirus dealt a heavy blow to oil demand and the world may run out of oil storage in a few months if no production cut measures are implemented.

The results of the talks could have a material impact on general market dynamics since oil stocks are guaranteed to be highly sensitive to oil price movements today.