CNBC’s “Squawk Box” team is joined by J.C. Flowers & Co. CEO Chris Flowers to discuss his outlook for the U.S. economy amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Stocks slashed their earlier gains on Friday as investors concluded a week of wild swings. Wall Street has been grappling with fears over the coronavirus’ economic blow, fueling historic market volatility.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded 112 points lower, or 0.6%, after rallying more than 400 points earlier in the day. The S&P 500 dipped 1%. The Nasdaq Composite traded 0.3% lower after jumping more than 2%.
The market’s swings come on a “quadruple witching” options expiration day, which tend to add to market volatility. A swift reversal in crude prices Friday sent ripples across markets. West Texas Intermediate futures were down more than 3% at $24.34 per barrel. Crude traded higher earlier in the day. An order in New York state for nonessential workers to stay home raised worries about a bigger economic impact from the coronavirus.
Friday’s moves follow the major averages posting solid gains Thursday in a reprieve from the relentless selling seen in the market this week.
The Dow is down 14% for the week and was on pace for its biggest one-week fall since October 2008, when it slid 18.2%. The S&P 500 has lost more than 12% week to date after dropping another 11.5% last week. The Nasdaq has fallen 10.3%.
“I think there’s a technical rebound coming,” CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Friday. But “I don’t know how long it will last because I think people are very worried.”
Investors got whiplash this week amid the massive daily swings in both directions. The S&P 500 concluded on Thursday a record streak of eight trading days with a closing change of at least 4%. The Cboe Volatility Index (VIX), Wall Street’s preferred fear gauge, closed above 80 earlier in the week, topping its financial crisis peak.
“The markets are trading more on emotion than the actual data,” said Sal Bruno, chief investment officer at IndexIQ. “That’s what’s causing the volatility.”
“We’ve seen assets just trade off, really for no good reason, but just because there’s fear,” he said. “When we look back at this, we’ll see how much of this was information-based trading and how much was emotionally based trading.”
On Wednesday, the Dow closed below 20,000 for the first time since February 2017. Investors were hoping that was the bottom and that the stock market can recover as virus cases peak in the coming months and government stimulus kicks in. The 30-stock index remained 32% below its all-time high level from February, while the S&P 500 was 29% below its high.
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