The Australian share market fell sharply during its opening session of trading on Monday (AEST) after the country’s Prime Minister announced drastic measures to curb the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19).
On Sunday, March 22, Morrison ordered that all pubs, clubs, churches and indoor sporting venues must close until further notice, while essential services such as grocery stores, gas stations and banks were to remain open. Australian schools will remain open for now.
As of Sunday morning, the government reported 1,098 confirmed cases and seven deaths.
Reeling from its worst week since the global financial crisis in 2008-2009, the benchmark SP/ASX200 has fallen from Friday’s close of 4,816 basis points to around 4,536, after Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared historic measures to curb the rise of COVID-19 from within the country.
The new measures aim to limit the spread of the deadly virus that has sent developed economies into free fall in recent weeks with the ASX responding with a 8.2 percent drop during the early Asian trading hours, revealing what could be in store this week for U.S. equities when they open tomorrow.
Chief investment officer at Orthogonal Trading, Joshua Green said the downward pressure currently being experienced in the Aussie share market was the result of much of the same seen over last week’s trade.
«I think the ASX is being driven by global equities, which are being driven by a combination of momentum selling, panic selling and de-levering on the back of coronavirus fears,» Green said.
«The market clearly wants some sort of fiscal deal in the US which appears to be a struggle due to partisanship,» he added.
Meanwhile in crypto, bitcoin (BTC) has fallen 5 percent on the day, from $6,200 to $5,894 with the rest of the market suffering a similar fate, signaling the potential for further bloodletting when U.S. equities markets open their doors for trading in the next 16 hours or so.
The total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies has fallen $10 billion over a 24-hour period, while major names such as ether (ETH), XRP and bitcoin cash (BCH) are down between 5-7 percent respectively.
Bailouts, Bitcoin, Disruption, Failures and Hope
This week on Let’s Talk Bitcoin we’re discussing the coming bailout-everything regime in a topic that’s both extremely timely but is also what originally forced many long-term bitcoin enthusiasts to learn about money and become interested in cryptocurrency in the first place.
As much of the world on an almost uniform and bipartisan basis shuts down to slow the spread of COVID19 and prepares to bail out first financial markets and now basically everything that can’t work on a fully remote basis, we’re talking about crisis, bailouts, the limits of monetary policy and the real possibility that it’s not a straw that breaks the back of our money but rather the whole world suddenly jumping on.
On today’s show we’ll discuss:
Today’s episode of Let’s Talk Bitcoin! featured Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan and Adam B. Levine.
This episode was sponsored by eToro.com and featured music by Jared Rubens and Adam B. Levine, with editing by Jonas.
