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(Adds gold, oil settlement prices)
* Wall Street slides as investors brace for dour earnings
* Oil prices mixed after output cut
* Minister says UK GDP could contract by 30% -Times
* China's export slump seen extending to March -Poll
By Herbert Lash
NEW YORK, April 13 (Reuters) - Stocks on Wall Street slid on
Monday over concerns of what the coronavirus pandemic will do to
corporate earnings while crude prices were mixed as a global
deal on record output cuts failed to quell doubts the pact would
head off an oil glut.
Gold prices rose to their highest in more than seven years
and the dollar fell slightly, with volume thin due to the Easter
Monday holiday across Europe and parts of Asia, where markets in
Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong were closed.
U.S. Treasury yields rose as the cut to global oil output
addressed a glut that has damaged the energy sector but reminded
investors of the sharp economic contraction countries face.
Britain's finance minister told colleagues the UK's economy
could shrink by 25% to 30% between April and June because of the
coronavirus lockdown, the Times newspaper reported. The slump in China's exports is expected to have extended
into March, while a collapse in oil prices likely deepened a
decline in imports, a Reuters poll showed. Chinese exports are expected to have fallen 14% in March
from a year earlier, slowing the downturn somewhat from a 17.2%
contraction in the January-February period. Imports are set to
have shrunk 9.5% from a year earlier, the sharpest drop since
July 2016 and deeper than a 4.0% decline in January-February.
"The market wants to find confidence in some of the recent
developments, but I still think it's going to be a very long
slog," said Gennadiy Goldberg, senior rates strategist at TD
Securities in New York.
MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD00000PUS shed
0.86% and its emerging market stock index lost 0.54%.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell
385.05 points, or 1.62%, to 23,334.32. The S&P 500 .SPX lost
36.51 points, or 1.31%, to 2,753.31 and the Nasdaq Composite
.IXIC dropped 4.73 points, or 0.06%, to 8,148.85.
Corporate America reports first-quarter results this week,
starting what is expected to be a painful quarterly earnings
season due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Earnings for S&P 500 firms are expected to tumble 9.0% in
the first quarter, compared with a Jan. 1 forecast of a 6.3%
rise, before plummeting 20.7% in the second quarter as sweeping
lockdowns halted business activity and spark furloughs.
The outbreak could reach its U.S. peak this week, a top U.S.
health official said, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
declared "the worst is over" for his state, the U.S. epicenter
of the virus. The United States, with the world's third-largest
population, has recorded more than 22,800 fatalities from
COVID-19, or more than any other country, a Reuters tally shows.
The Nikkei .N225 fell 1.9% overnight in Japan and South
Korean shares .KS11 dropped 1.3%, while China's CSI300 index
.CSI300 lost 0.5%.
Oil prices have slumped more than 50% from their January
peak as the coronavirus pandemic hit fuel demand.
International benchmark Brent futures LCOc1 rose 26 cents
to settle at $31.74 per barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate
(WTI) crude futures CLc1 fell 35 cents to settle at $22.41 per
barrel in a volatile session.
The dollar index =USD fell 0.088% and the Japanese yen
JPY= strengthened 0.79% versus the greenback at 107.61 per
dollar.
Gold, seen as a store of value when inflation picks up, rose
as investors sought the safe-haven on fear of the harm the
coronavirus will do to the global growth and corporate earnings.
U.S. gold futures GCcv1 settled 0.5% higher at $1,761.40
an ounce and hit their highest since February 2013 at $1,769.50.
Central banks are doing everything in their power to support
the stock market and economy, which will eventually lead to
inflation, said Phil Streible, chief market strategist at Blue
Line Futures in Chicago.
"Yields on debt instruments are virtually zero, which
increases physical demand for gold and silver as a safe-haven
asset," Streible said.
Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes US10YT=RR fell 9/32
in price to lift their yield to 0.749%.