Gold prices just lower; monthly gains on track
* Fed to lend against student loans, repurchase Treasuries
* More states under lockdown raise fears of hit to economy
* Goldman Sachs sees 24% plunge in Q2 U.S. real GDP
* Boeing top gainer on Dow
* Indexes off: Dow 1.13%, S&P 1.22%, Nasdaq flat
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By Uday Sampath Kumar and Medha Singh
March 23 (Reuters) - Wall Street slipped on Monday as the
still rapidly spreading coronavirus forced more U.S. states into
lockdown, eclipsing optimism from an unprecedented round of
policy easing by the Federal Reserve.
After cutting interest rates to near zero and offering to
purchase more Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities last
week, the central bank now decided to lend against student loans
and credit card loans as well as buy bonds of larger employers.
The unprecedented moves briefly lifted the U.S. stock index
futures more than 3%, but the mounting death toll from COVID-19
and growing evidence of the economic damage to Corporate America
quickly sent the main indexes back into the red.
"They are throwing everything in the kitchen sink," said
Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James in St. Petersburg,
Florida.
"(But) these efforts alone are not going to do anything
against the virus - that's the big problem. It will help but we
still need fiscal stimulus and we need a lot of it. We need it
geared towards the people who are going to be really suffering."
Investors had hoped the U.S. Senate would clear a $1
trillion-plus coronavirus stimulus package over the weekend, but
Democrats and Republicans were still scrambling to come to an
agreement. Ohio, Louisiana and Delaware have now joined New York and
California in asking people to stay home, foreshadowing a near
halt in economic activity and more pain for U.S. equities, which
have already lost more than $9 trillion in value in the biggest
selloff since the financial crisis. Goldman Sachs expects an outright contraction in global real
GDP in 2020 on the back of a 24% plunge in U.S. real GDP in the
second quarter: two-and-a-half times as large as the previous
post-war record. Boeing BA.N was the biggest gainer on the Dow .DJI ,
rising 6.1%, as shareholders received an unusual piece of good
news from Goldman Sachs upgrading its rating on the planemaker
to "buy", expecting the company to recover from its recent woes.
At 9:57 a.m. ET the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI was
down 217.61 points, or 1.13%, at 18,956.37, the S&P 500 .SPX
was down 28.20 points, or 1.22%, at 2,276.72 and the Nasdaq
Composite .IXIC was down 3.01 points, or 0.04%, at 6,876.51.
Danaher Corp DHR.N jumped 4.4%, as its molecular
diagnostics company received the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration approval for the first rapid coronavirus
diagnostic test. Declining issues outnumbered advancers more than 3-to-1 on
the NYSE and 1.44-to-1 on the Nasdaq.
The S&P index recorded no new 52-week high and 165 new lows,
while the Nasdaq recorded two new highs and 248 new lows.