Dow lost 86, advancers barely ahead of decliners & NAZ jumped 110 (a new record). The MLP index was about even in the 135s & the REIT index went up 2+ to the 358s. Junk bond funds inched higher & Treasuries continued in demand. Oil rose in the 42s & gold surged 41 to 1991 (more on both below).
AMJ (Alerian MLP Index tracking fund)
![Live 24 hours gold chart [Kitco Inc.]](https://www.kitco.com/images/live/gold.gif?0.2180338269244485)
New York Gov Andrew Cuomo said Monday health authorities are
“very concerned” about the upcoming flu season, warning it will make the
coronavirus pandemic more complicated “in many ways.” “You’re in
the flu season. Everybody is sneezing, everybody is coughing and
everybody has a runny nose. Who has the flu and who is possibly Covid
positive? It becomes a much more difficult calculus,” Cuomo said. “Maybe
God is good and he says to us this year, ‘you’ve been through enough.
I’m going to give you a light flu season this year, which we would
deserve, by the way.’ But it is definitely a stresser on the system,” he
added. “It’s going to add additional stress on the hospitals. It’s
going to add additional stress on the testing facilities.” Cuomo
said many of the testing facilities that are being used during the
pandemic are the same ones used during the flu season. “They are going
to turn around and say to me, ’I can’t do 100 Covid tests anymore. I can
only do 60 Covid tests because I have to do 40 flu tests,” he said. US
health officials have repeatedly warned that they are preparing to
battle 2 bad viruses circulating next fall & winter as the
coronavirus outbreak runs into flu season. Health
officials had hoped the coronavirus would abate during the summer
months, but that has not happened. The coronavirus has continued to
rapidly spread, infecting more than 5.4M Americans & killing at
least 170K, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins
University. Now, health officials fear the pandemic in the US
could get worse as temperatures get cooler & people spend time
together indoors. Covid-19 is “not going to disappear from the
planet,” White House health advisor Dr Anthony Fauci has said, adding
that infectious disease experts learned about how the virus behaves by
watching outbreaks in other regions such as southern Africa that entered
their colder seasons. Dr Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, warned last week that America is bracing for “the worst fall, from a public health perspective, we’ve ever had.” “We’re
going to have COVID in the fall, & we’re going to have flu in the
fall. And either one of those by themselves can stress certain hospital
systems,” he said. He has urged Americans to get their flu shot as
well as follow CDC guidelines such as wearing masks & washing hands
frequently. New York state, once the epicenter of the US
outbreak, now has one of the lowest infection rates in the country. New York's infection rate reached 0.7%, the lowest rate since
the outbreak began, Cuomo said. “We are averaging 1% or under since June. That is exactly where we want to be,” he added.
New York Gov. Cuomo warns of ‘difficult’ flu season as coronavirus spreads
New cases of the coronavirus in the US have remained stubbornly high
in recent days, with the country averaging more than 51K new cases
per day over the past 7 days. Universities & schools have already
begun reopening, many against a backdrop of significant community
spread. Countries that had early success in containing the virus, such
as New Zealand, are now struggling to eradicate it and are facing new & mystifying clusters of infection.
Coronavirus updates: U.S. averaging over 50,000 cases a day
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that New Zealand's
general election would be postponed by a month, to Oct 17, due to an
outbreak of coronavirus in Auckland, the country's largest city. New Zealand had eliminated the pandemic in Jun, but is
facing a new spike that has led to the quarantine of dozens of people. Officials have acknowledged that they still don't have clues as to how
the virus was reintroduced & transmitted in the country. In Australia, the state of Victoria
registered its deadliest day of the disease, with 25 fatalities
overnight. More than 2/3 of the fatalities since the beginning of
the outbreak have been associated with aged-care homes. Japan's GDP fell 7.8% in the qr ended
in Jun, the worst fall since such data started being collected in
1980, due notably to a steep drop in both consumer spending & exports. That compares with a 9.5% GDP decline in the US & an 11.7% fall in
the EU. New spikes of the virus in many
parts of the world place govs in a real dilemma:
New virus spike delays New Zealand’s election. It could delay the world recovery as well
Gold prices rallied, with the gain helping the precious metal put in the best one-day gain in about 4 months on the back of a slide in gov bond yields & the $, which were raising the appeal of the precious commodity. Last week, gold came under pressure as Treasuries climbed to an 8-week high, detracting from the appeal of bullion. However, gold enthusiasts insists that uncertainty about the economic landscape fostered by the COVID-19 pandemic make bullion a solid long-term bet, particularly as countries spend Ts to support their economies. Some experts view gold's recent pullback from a recent powerful uptrend as consolidation ahead of its next phase. Gold suffered a sharp pullback on Tues that helped to snap a weekly win streak. The People's Bank of China today injected fresh liquidity into its financial system while it kept the rate steady at 2.95% on a one-year medium term lending facility $100.74B while it deals with the effects of the viral outbreak. Dec gold rose $48 (2.5%) to settle at $1998 an ounce, marking its best daily climb on a point & percentage basis since Apr 22, after the metal on Fri notched a weekly decline of about 3.9%, highlighted last Tues by the biggest daily $ decline since 2013.
Gold prices notch best day in about four months with 2.5% gain
Oil futures shook off early weakness, with its resilience
attributed in part to reports China would boost US crude imports &
that OPEC+ members largely complied with production cuts last month. West Texas Intermediate crude for Sep rose 88¢ (2.1%) to
finish at $42.89 a barrel. The global benchmark, Oct Brent crude,
gained 57¢ (1.3%) to settle at $45.37a barrel. A report said that Chinese state-owned oil companies had tentatively booked tankers to carry at least 20M barrels of US crude in Aug & Sep. Meanwhile, compliance with OPEC+ production cuts was around 95-97% — a historically high level — in Jul. But analysts said uncertainty over the global demand outlook
following a resurgence in cases in parts of Europe & elsewhere could
continue to limit upside. On the supply front, investors will be watching a meeting this week of
the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee, the panel set up by OPEC &
its allies (OPEC+) to monitor production. OPEC+ this
month relaxed earlier output curbs, reducing output by 7.7M
barrels a day versus the reduction of 9.7M barrels a day put in
place in May.
Oil ends higher, buoyed by OPEC+ compliance with cuts
NAZ & the S&P 500 reached record highs today while the Dow remains a little under its record highs earlier this year. The virus won't give up its fight, as shown in New Zealand. Victory over the coronavirus is still going to take time & effort. That is a nagging dark cloud over the stock market which investors are not worried about. The graph for the Dow below shows its recovery since mid Mar, an outstanding performance. 😀
Dow Jones Industrials
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