For the third week in a row investors had their attentions pulled from a horrendous US jobs number by some market-lifting news.
For the week ending April 4th, another 6.6 million Americans lost their jobs – that makes it roughly 16.6 million in the space of 3 weeks. Like the numbers for the previous fortnight, that reading was far higher than analysts’ expectations, and puts the number of the newly unemployed on track to cross 20 million next week.
Yet in an expertly timed intervention, not long after that jobs data the Federal Reserve revealed its latest stimulus package. With Jerome Powell stating that the central bank will ‘forcefully, proactively and aggressively’ protect and bolster the US economy, the Fed unveiled another $2.3 trillion in loans aimed at small and mid-size businesses.
The move partially explains why the markets have somewhat taken the jobs data in their stride in these last few weeks – the worse the numbers were, the more likely the Fed was to act.
The Dow Jones, which at one pointed looked set for a negative open, rose close to 500 points after the bell, nearing 23900 for the first time in almost exactly one month.
This in turn freed up the European indices to return to the intraday levels that had abandoned at lunchtime. The FTSE rose 3.2% to near 5840, while the DAX climbed 2.4% to hit 10575, and the CAC one more struck 4500 with a 1.8% increase.
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