US Market ends up on Fed's $2.3 trillion backstop

The US equity market finished session higher on Thursday, 09 April 2020, as risk sentiments were upbeat after the U.S. Federal Reserve rolled out a massive $2.3 trillion program to support the economy crushed by moves to stem the coronavirus outbreak. At closing bell, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 285.80 points, or 1.22%, to 23,719.37. The S&P 500 gained 39.84 points, or 1.45%, to 2,789.82. The Nasdaq Composite added 62.67 points, or 0.77%, to 8,153.58. The US market closed for Good Friday tomorrow. For the week, the S&P 500 gained12.1%, the Dow rose 12.7%, and the Nasdaq Composite climbed 10.6%.

The US market commenced trading with firm footing, as the US's central bank emergency measures. The US central bank announced another round of measures to provide as much as $2.3 trillion in extra aid.

The $2.3 trillion in loans seeks to backstop a number of programmes extending a lifeline to people and businesses knocked sideways by stay-at-home orders that have grounded entire sectors of the economy to a halt, thrown millions out of work and sent consumers retreating behind closed doors. The Fed's liquidity bazooka aims to bolster the effectiveness of the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program, which provides loans to small businesses so that they can keep their workers on payroll.

The loans are also designed to ensure credit keeps flowing to US households as well as to small and medium-sized businesses, and help state and local governments by establishing a Municipal Liquidity Facility that will offer up to $500bn in lending.

The move comes at the same time as US unemployment claims surged for the third week. With several state unemployment insurance offices deluged in recent weeks, 6.6 million workers applied for jobless benefits in the week ending April 4, the US Department of Labor said on Thursday. That followed 6.9 million jobless applications the week before, the most since the Great Recession of 2008.

Traders also largely shrugged off preliminary data from the University of Michigan showing a record-breaking decline in U.S. consumer sentiment in the month of April. The report said the consumer sentiment index plummeted to 71.0 in April after plunging to 89.1 in March.

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