Stockmarkets go from panic to hysteria

Battered by the spread of coronavirus and the tumbling oil price, stockmarkets have succumbed to hysteria.

The stockmarket has passed from “panic mode into pure hysteria”, Ayush Ansal of Crimson Black Capital told Simon English in the Evening Standard. Battered by the spread of coronavirus and the tumbling oil price, Monday was the worst day for many global markets since the 2008 financial crisis.

Losses on Wall Street were so severe that trading was halted for 15 minutes on a day when America’s S&P 500 index plunged 7.6%. The 30-company Dow Jones Industrial Average saw a similarly dramatic collapse. Italy’s FTSE MIB index lost nearly 10%. The FTSE 100 and pan-European Stoxx 600 indices both officially entered bear markets, defined as a 20% drop from the most recent high. Australia’s market fell by 7.4%.

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Markets editor

Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019. 

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere. 

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful. 

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.