Last week, fears about the coronavirus gripped Wall Street. Thanks to the virus’s virulent and quickly spreading nature, the number of infected grew exponentially with new cases doubling roughly everyday. With the virus entering other nations outside China, investors began to worry that this black swan event could impact the global economy. This week, however, things have moved in a more positive direction. With infections starting to slow, traders cheered that the effects of the virus may not be that bad. This set the markets in motion and allowed them to move higher over the week.
Other good news came from China as well. While phase one of the trade deal was in the books, China unexpectedly announced that it was removing several billion dollars’ worth of tariffs on U.S. made goods. Aside from the immediate effects, traders believed that this could be a good sign that phase two talks are moving in the right direction and that this second deal may not take as long to complete.
Meanwhile, economic data continued to rebound this week. As the start of a new month, there was a plethora of metrics being released. And the numbers were good across key gauges of manufacturing, jobs and consumer health.
This, coupled with still trending higher earnings results from a wide variety of stocks and sectors helped brighten the mood on Wall Street, thus moving stocks higher over much of the trading week.
Be sure to check out our previous Wrap here, when the coronavirus hit the markets hard.
