earnings: Buoyed by company earnings, world markets look past virus death toll

LONDON: Global markets showed further signs of stabilisation on Wednesday as investors looked past a rising death toll from China’s coronavirus outbreak to tiptoe back into shares and out of safe-haven assets such as the yen and German bonds.

World stocks were nearly flat despite a 3 per cent fall in Hong Kong , where trading restarted after the Lunar New Year holiday, and remained just 2 per cent off recent record highs following Tuesday’s bounce on Wall Street that was aided by robust earnings from Apple.

Of the 104 US companies to report results so far, 68.3 per cent have topped expectations.

European shares opened firmer after Tuesday’s 0.8 per cent rise, which was driven by banks after encouraging results from Spain’s Santander, and Swedbank a day earlier.

While mainland Chinese markets remain closed, Chinese equity futures traded in Singapore rebounded from two days of losses to rise 1.79 per cent, the biggest gain in almost seven weeks.

“There appears to be more transparency, communication in terms of the virus, and that makes it easier to start assessing the economic fallout. So the markets have taken some comfort from that,” said Rainer Guntermann, a rates strategist at Commerzbank in Frankfurt.

He was comparing the picture with Beijing’s secretive stance during the 2003 SARS virus outbreak which enabled the pathogen to spread faster and claim more victims.

Risk aversion has not completely lifted, however; with the number of coronavirus fatalities now at 132 and 6,000 cases reported worldwide, there are fears the outbreak could inflict serious damage on Chinese growth, already at three-decade lows.