Wall Street stops trading as stocks fall by 8% on opening due to coronavirus

Stocks fell 8% in the first minutes of trading Monday on Wall Street and triggered another temporary halt to trading as huge swaths of the economy come closer to shutting down, from airlines to restaurants, abc30.com reports.

Emergency actions taken by the Federal Reserve late Sunday to prop up the economy and get financial markets running smoothly again may have raised fears even further, some investors argued.

The selling was just as aggressive in markets around the globe. European stocks and crude oil were both down close to 10%. The world’s brightest spot may have been Japan, where the central bank announced more stimulus for the economy, and stocks still lost 2.5%.

The spreading coronavirus is causing businesses around the world to close their doors, which is draining away revenue. That has economists slashing their expectations for upcoming months, and JPMorgan Chase says the U.S. economy may shrink at a 2% annual rate this quarter and 3% in the April-through-June quarter. To many investors, that meets the definition of a recession.

The Federal Reserve has been trying to do what it can to help the economy, and over the weekend it slashed short-term interest rates back to their record low of nearly zero.

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