Dow Jones futures declined by more than 3%, paring some of the gains made this week. The decline happened as the $2.2 trillion package passed in Senate heads to the House of Representative for debate. It also came a day after an acrimonious telephone call between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.
While those two are big news, the bigger news came from researchers at Washington University. In a report, the researchers found that the impact of Coronavirus on the United States could be dire. According to their estimates, the disease could kill as few as 38k people to a high of 162k. The report found that most of these deaths, at about 81k, will likely happen by June this year.
To show the magnitude of these numbers, you need to look at where things stand today. In the US, more than 85,749 people have been diagnosed with the disease. The number of deaths are just 1,304 using data in the World of Meters. This means that America could see hundreds of Coronavirus-related deaths in the next few days.
There is precedent in all this. In Italy, 709 people died between Wednesday and Thursday. Worse, more than 4,800 people have died in the past five days. The situation is the same in Spain, where more than 3,000 people have died in the past five days.
The situation means that the stimulus currently being debated may not be enough since the lockdown may last for a longer period.
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Dow Jones Technical Analysis
Futures tied to the Dow Jones have dropped by more than 500 points today. On the hourly chart, we see that the index has moved from the 61.8% Fibonacci Retracement level and is moving towards the 50% level. The 50% Fibonacci level is also an important support, as shown by the black trend line. I expect the index to test this level, and then resume the upward trend.
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