Weekly Market Summary.

As you can see from the accompanying table, with the exception of Hong Kong and China, global equity markets rose strongly over the week – which more than recouped the previous week’s losses and clearly highlights the benefits of taking a long-term approach to investing.

It has been a volatile week for global equity markets. Although the overall tone was very much glass half empty, most equity markets headed into this weekend in a much more upbeat mood, as markets started to focus on the reopening of more countries and improving US consumer sentiment.

The major global equity markets ended the week in positive territory despite more economic data showing the economic damage being brought about by the coronavirus outbreak.

It was a week of two-halves for global equity markets.

Global equity markets this week bounced between gains and losses, before finishing the week slightly lower, as volatility and uncertainty was again the key theme given the mixed coronavirus headlines; the oil price, economic data; and US Q1 company earnings.

Given the level of uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus, equity markets have recently tended to sell-off towards the end of the week.

Global equity markets closed lower today (Friday 3 April 2020), resulting in weekly declines: the FTSE-100 ended the week down 1.72%, while in the US the S&P 500 finished the week 2.08% lower.

Global equity markets rallied strongly this week on optimism that America’s $2tr fiscal stimulus will mitigate the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak. For example, in the US, the Dow Jones rose nearly 13%, while the broader S&P 500 index ended the week just over 10% higher after recording its strongest three-day advance since the 1930s

This week global equity markets extended the previous week’s losses amid heightened coronavirus uncertainty.