Minister Uttama Savanayana said after the meeting there will be a Bt1,000 payment per month for two months for low-income earners, farmers and people who do freelance work. The handout will begin in April.

The number of people eligible has yet to be calculated, he said.

The cash handout is among the ministry’s first set of relief measures coming in response to an economy staggered by the Covid-19 virus outbreak.

It will present the full package to the Cabinet next week.

Uttama had said earlier that other measures included soft loans to commercial banks from the Government Housing Bank to be distributed among affected businesses, and tax incentives to discourage companies from laying off employees.

The gold bar price was Bt24,900 per baht weight to buy and Bt25,000 to sell, while gold ornaments were Bt24,453.08 and Bt25,500, respectively.

Prices rose by about Bt450 per baht weight from Thursday’s close (March 5), when the buying rate of a gold bar was Bt24,450 and the selling rate Bt24,550, while gold ornaments cost Bt24,013.44 to buy and Bt25,050 to sell.

Meanwhile, Comex futures gold contracts increased by $25 to $1,668.00 (Bt52,518.50) per ounce at Thursday’s close as investors turned to safe-haven assets amid Covid-19 worries.

A stock analyst at Krungsri Securities expected that the index would fall between 1,360 and 1,370 points before rebounding due to uncertainty amid the worrying Covid-19 situation, which is tending to become more severe in the US and other countries.

“Investors are still under pressure, which can be seen from rising gold prices and declining US bond yields,” the stock analyst said.

“However, the index will rebound from internal positive sentiment after the Cabinet signalled its readiness to consider the first set of Covid-19 relief measures worth Bt100 billion, including an adjustment of Super Savings Fund criteria, making it similar to the Long Term Equity Fund.”

The analyst said the SET Index yesterday (March 5) rose sharply by 12.22 points, or 0.89 per cent, to 1,391 with daily transaction of Bt67 billion due to investors’ expectations that the European Central Bank and the Bank of Thailand would follow the US Federal Reserve in cutting the interest rate to tackle the Covid-19 situation.

“Foreign investors made a net sell in stocks of Bt4.302 billion and a net buy of bonds worth Bt78 million. There are 25,307 net long TFEX contracts.”

The analyst recommended four groups of stocks for investors:

● Hotel, retail, and contractor stocks, which would benefit from the Cabinet’s approval of Bt75 billion of economic stimulus measures, and public-private partnership projects such as Mint, Centel, ERW, CPAll, HMPro, BJC, STEC, and CK.

● Energy stocks, which would benefit from Opec and its partners planning to cut production capacity by 1 million barrels a day on March 5-6, such as PTT, PTTEP, TOP, and PTTGC.

● Financial stocks, which respond to reduced financial costs due to interest rate cut trends, such as MTC, Sawad, and KTC.

● Defensive stocks which pay high dividends, such as Advanc, Intuch, and TTW.

A U-shaped recovery in the region should start later in 2020, but by then overall economic damage is likely to reach US$211 billion (Bt6.64 trillion), according to the S&P Global Ratings report titled “Covid-19 now threatens more damage in Asia-Pacific”.

The hardest-hit economies remain Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand, where people flows and supply chain channels are large, the ratings agency said.

“It is no surprise that here we also see the most robust fiscal policy response, which will cushion the blow but not sharp downturns,” said S&P Global Ratings Asia-Pacific chief economist Shaun Roache. “We expect Hong Kong’s economy to contract by -0.8 per cent in 2020, Singapore’s to flat line, and Thailand’s expansion to slow to 1.6 per cent.”

Meanwhile, household spending in Japan and Korea “is set to weaken further, and slower growth in the US and Europe will add to external headwinds. China’s return to work is proceeding at a glacial pace as local officials remain cautious about a renewed upturn in infections”.

The coronavirus epidemic is not expected to inflict permanent damage on the labour force or capital stock. This means the region’s economies should be employing as many people and producing as much output by the end of 2021 as they would have done in the absence of the virus.

“Still, even a U-shaped recovery will mean a regional economic loss of about $211 billion that will weaken balance sheets. Some economic activities will be lost forever, especially in the service sector,” Roache said. This loss will be distributed across the household, non-financial corporate, financial, and sovereign sectors. The more governments step in to cushion the blow with public resources, the more the burden will be shifted to the public sector.

“We now expect China to grow at just 4.8 per cent in 2020 before rebounding strongly by 6.6 per cent in 2021. We make a very important assumption in our China forecast – that the government shows flexibility with its growth targets and steps lighter on the stimulus gas pedal compared to past downturns,” Roache noted.

Asia’s emerging markets such as Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and India appear somewhat insulated, with less exposure to China and global supply chains, the ratings agency said. However, the outlook could get worse very quickly for two reasons. If low reported cases are due, in part, to minimal testing, then the viral spread is still possible, and could overwhelm weak healthcare infrastructure. Financial conditions could also tighten quickly.

“If investors ask for a much higher risk premium for emerging market assets, policymakers will have much less space to cut interest rates and boost public spending,” Roache said. “This could add to downward pressures on growth.”

Local coronavirus transmissions in Japan and South Korea add a new, highly uncertain dimension to problems in these economies. Households are likely to respond to a greater risk of infection by avoiding public spaces, which will depress spending on discretionary goods and services.

“In Japan and Korea, we estimate that discretionary consumption accounts for about 25 per cent of GDP. We now anticipate Japan’s economy will contract -0.4 per cent and Korea’s growth will slow to 1.1 per cent,” he said.

Australia is also quite vulnerable, with “growth in 2020 expected to touch 1.2 per cent, by our new forecast, well below trends”, he added.

The S&P 500 fell more than 3%, erasing the majority of Wednesday’s steep gains, as wild swings piled up. The benchmark has had the most volatile week since S&P Global Ratings cut the U.S. debt rating in 2011. Banks and tech shares led losses.

Read More: Volatility Superlatives Piling Up in Week of Shocking Reversals

Investor confidence has been shaken as cases of the virus continue to multiply across the U.S. despite efforts by authorities to contain the outbreak. The 10-year yield sank to 0.90%, while the dollar plunged against the yen. Gold climbed and oil slid.

The S&P 500 has swung more than 3% five times in eight sessions

“If you think about what market volatility means, it’s lots of people moving at the same time. When you have a 4.5% up day and a 2% down day — what does that mean?” Kathryn Kaminski, chief research strategist at AlphaSimplex Group, said on Bloomberg Television. “It means we don’t know what’s going on.”

Risk assets have whipsawed this week, with traders still on edge amid a rise in virus cases around the world and governments extending quarantines and travel restrictions. An industry association warned the outbreak could cost airlines as much as $113 billion in lost revenue. The S&P 500 has rebounded since the Federal Reserve pledged action on Friday, but it remains more than 10% below last month’s all-time high.

In Asia, the main equities benchmark headed for a fourth straight gain. Surging Chinese stocks have now erased the last of their declines triggered by the outbreak.

These are the main moves in markets:

Stocks:

— The S&P 500 Index dropped 3.3% as of 1:45 p.m. New York time.

— The Stoxx Europe 600 Index fell 1.4%.

— The MSCI Asia Pacific Index gained 1.3%.

Currencies:

— The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index declined 0.2%.

— The euro climbed 0.4% to $1.1179.

— The British pound gained 0.4% to $1.2927.

— The Japanese yen strengthened 0.7% to 106.78 per dollar.

Bonds:

— The yield on 10-year Treasuries sank 15 basis points to 0.90%.

— The yield on two-year Treasuries decreased 13 basis points to 0.57%.

— Germany’s 10-year yield fell three basis points at -0.67%.

Commodities:

— West Texas Intermediate crude fell 1.5% at $46.07 a barrel.

— Gold strengthened 1.6% to $1,669.00 an ounce.

A gauge of stocks in Shanghai and Shenzhen has jumped 14% in just over a month to close at a two-year high on Thursday. One exchange-traded fund focused on 5G amassed $2 billion in days as investors clamored to chase a rally in tech shares. Seeking to maximize returns, punters have driven stock leverage and daily turnover past 1 trillion yuan ($142 billion), both near four-year highs. Government bonds have surged too, with the 10-year yield approaching its lowest level since 2002.

It’s a sharp turnaround from just a month ago, when the virus darkened factories across the nation, whole cities were isolated under quarantine and the stock market was hit by the most savage selling in years.

The swift response from the Communist Party to arrest the spread of the deadly disease helped restore confidence as the number of new infections outside of the worst-hit province of Hubei drop. A succession of policy-easing measures ensured liquidity was ample in markets, with a measure of interbank borrowing costs tumbling to its lowest level in almost a decade. Another impetus for the rally: the prospect of massive fiscal stimulus similar to that unleashed in the wake of the global financial crisis.

The result is an explosion of speculative trading by Chinese investors hooked on greed at a time when global equity markets are imploding and fear is rampant. That’s helped Shanghai’s equity benchmark become this week’s top performing in the world.

Such a disconnect by China’s still largely insulated markets isn’t unusual. A stock bubble in 2015 existed in isolation to the rest of the world before bursting violently, which global peers mostly shrugged off.

“Chinese equities provide a hedge against the recent volatility in global risk assets,” Eugenia Victorino, head of Asia strategy at SEB AB, wrote in a note Thursday. “We continue to believe in the resilience in Chinese equities in the near term.”

She recommends a long position in Chinese equity futures, targeting another 16% rally.

Still, the contrast to the rest of the world is glaring, especially given the potentially devastating impact of the virus to an economy already struggling under a mountain of debt and weakened by the trade war with the U.S. Factory activity contracted by the most on record in February and economists continue to lower their China growth forecasts.

Private enterprise faces a rising debt bill and an increase in defaults is likely this year. Just last week the government took over once-acquisitive HNA Group Co. after the contagion hurt the firm’s ability to meet debt obligations.

Yet, for now, investors have faith in the government to navigate this crisis like it has others in recent decades. China’s army of about 160 million retail traders are a formidable force when momentum starts to take off, as seen by a rush into new mutual stock funds as well as ETFs.

As China’s markets continue to defy gravity, the rest of the world can only look on with wonder — or fear that it could all come crashing down.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 970 points Thursday as investors fled stocks and headed for the safety of U.S. debt. The 3.6 percent skid canceled out most of Wednesday’s eye-popping rally, and was in line with the punishing sell-offs that have dominated trading for weeks as the outbreak grinds down economic growth.

All 11 Standard & Poor’s 500 sectors turned negative, with financials, industrials and energy the worst-performing sectors. All 30 Dow blue chips were in the red. United Technologies, aerospace giant Boeing, JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs were among the Dow’s biggest drags. Profits for financial firms decline in a low-interest rate environment.

The flight to debt sent the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury – a global financial mainstay – to record lows. The trajectory could be an ominous sign of a weakening economy, because bond yields decline as their prices rise. Gold, another safe haven, climbed 0.3 percent. Meanwhile, mortgage rates also hit record lows.

A day earlier, investors appeared heartened by Joe Biden’s Super Tuesday victories and the likelihood of a moderate option to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for the Democratic presidential nomination. The Dow rocketed nearly 1,200 points, more than 4.5 percent, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite climbed 4.2 percent and 3.85 percent, respectively. The bounce came after the International Monetary Fund committed $50 billion to fight coronavirus in low-income and emerging-market countries.

“Yesterday’s market catalysts, clearly a slate of one-offs, were Joe Biden’s success on Super Tuesday and a range of spending announcements to tackle the coronavirus,” including from Asia and the U.S. Congress, said David Rosenberg of Rosenberg Research in an email to The Washington Post. “Markets typically price in an announcement once. It got it yesterday. The news today is the spread of the virus in the U.S. and Italy closing schools, universities and museums.”

Investors had found cause for alarm rather than comfort on Tuesday after the Federal Reserve announced its first emergency rate cut since the 2008 financial crisis, bringing the benchmark rate down 50 basis points. Nor do they appear to have been mollified by Congress’s passage Wednesday of an $8.3 billion spending package to fight the coronavirus on U.S. soil.

“Investor sentiment may also be finally shifting from fear and panic that the cases of the Coronavirus are likely to get much worse to accepting it and even looking beyond it,” Megan Horneman, director of portfolio strategy at Verdence Capital Management in Hunt Valley, Maryland, wrote in a commentary Thursday.

As of Thursday, the global death toll from the coronavirus had surpassed 3,200, and more than 90,000 people have been infected. The outbreak’s hold on the United States is also tightening, with California declaring a state of emergency after its first coronavirus-linked death brought the nation’s death toll to 11. Americans are beginning to face disruption to their work and travel, and the list of major events canceled in the face of the outbreak grows by the hour. Many grocery stores and pharmacies report being cleaned out of bottled water, disinfectant products and shelf-stable and frozen foods.

“We are expecting more dramatic market swings up and down and would not be surprised if we test last Friday’s lows again,” said David Donabedian, chief investment officer of CIBC Private Wealth Management, which manages $62 billion, in an email. “Volatility will be with us for a considerable period, given the election cycle and COVID-19. We expect that economic data over the next two to three months will get worse before it gets better.”

The World Health Organization said this week that covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, has killed about 3.4 percent of those diagnosed with the illness – a higher rate than estimated previously. But President Donald Trump downplayed worries on Wednesday evening, telling Fox News that the 3.4 percent mortality rate announced by the World Health Organization was “false” and suggesting it was under 1 percent.

“This is really my hunch,” Trump said.

The outbreak has disrupted global supply chains and threatens to stymie economic growth since the first cases emerged in Wuhan, China, in late December, roiling markets across the globe. Trump has staked much of his argument for reelection on the strength of Wall Street, which had been setting record highs as recently as three weeks ago.

Global travel is plummeting as event cancellations and travel restrictions mount, delivering a brutal blow to tourism, aviation, cruises and hospitality.

Sequoia Capital, a respected and highly successful Silicon Valley venture capital firm, issued a memo to its founders and chief executives of its portfolio companies on Wednesday that warns of “potential business consequences” of the coronavirus and called the epidemic the “black swan of 2020.”

“It will take considerable time – perhaps several quarters – before we can be confident that the virus has been contained,” according to the memo. “It will take even longer for the global economy to recover its footing.”

Investors are looking forward to ADP payroll numbers and fresh manufacturing data Tuesday to further suss out the damage coronavirus has done to the global economy. Analysts are predicting global economic growth could slow to the lowest levels since the financial crisis this quarter.

“Earnings guidance over the next few weeks and soft data such as confidence surveys will be the primary source of trying to assess how long the economic damage from the virus will last,” Horneman wrote in commentary.

“V-shape recovery theory has been significantly challenged, as investors correctly entertain the idea of a far more protracted recovery,” strategists including Luis Costa, Dumitru Vicol and Sara Felizardo wrote in a note.

The Covid-19 virus, which started in China, is now weighing on developing nations directly through supply chains and via more sluggish growth, the strategists said. While the Federal Reserve’s rate cut has helped stocks par losses, lower rates worldwide won’t “lift all boats in EM.”

“The feedback loop between U.S. equities, EM credit and EMFX in this environment is biased to the downside,” the strategists wrote. “It is absolutely clear to every single investor that the general end of 2019 EM/DM growth consensus is not going to materialize.”

The coronavirus and measures to contain it offer a rare twin supply-demand shock to the world’s economy with Chinese factories shuttered just as consumers become more hesitant to shop, travel or eat out.

Outside the most at-risk nations in Asia, Israel, Russia and Chile are among the most vulnerable markets from a global slowdown standpoint, according to Citi. Pressure on governments to pay health care expenses could also leave the Caribbean, nations that were once a part of the Commonwealth of Independent States and Africa in trouble, they wrote.

Citi prefers to receive the five-year point in the Russia IRS single-currency curve on the view that the nation’s CPI will be on a downward trend until a year-end rebound. Citi also recommends shorting South Africa’s rand versus a basket of euros and U.S. dollars as the nation’s economy struggles.

MTR said Thursday net income fell 25% to HK$11.9 billion ($1.5 billion) in the year ended Dec. 31, during which the subway frequently turned into a platform for violence and vandalism. The protests and virus probably erased HK$1.3 billion from profit in the first two months of 2020, MTR said.

“The impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on our businesses is likely to continue for some time, but the precise timing and scale of the impact is difficult to predict and will depend on the development of the situation,” MTR said in a statement. “We have taken a number of cost control measures to mitigate the financial impact of this challenging situation.”

The network, known for its fast and reliable services, has lately suffered setbacks. Two of its subway trains collided last March during a test run of a new signaling system, resulting in two drivers being hospitalized. Months earlier, a signaling glitch on four subway lines caused chaos at stations during the morning peak-hour rush. In September, eight people were injured in a derailment, later blamed on a maintenance lapse.

While MTR manages a Stockholm commuter train service and has a joint venture in the U.K. with FirstGroup, it depends on Hong Kong for the bulk of its revenue. Gains from property development may cushion the company from violence-related losses, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

MTR, established in 1975, carries 5.9 million passengers every weekday, according to its website. Shares of the company have fallen 5.7% this year.

“MTR’s wounded profit growth may struggle to recover from the one-two punch of drawn-out protests and the coronavirus outbreak, especially as Hong Kong cuts train service to mainland China, and as daily commutes give way to working from home,” Denise Wong, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote in a report last month.

The virus’s spread is upending supply chains and cutting food demand in China, delaying billions of dollars in American sales of everything from pork to soybeans. Making up for the losses later in the year may be difficult if the dollar continues to strengthen against currencies in Brazil and Argentina, two of the U.S.’s top agricultural rivals.

China has pledged to buy $36.5 billion in U.S. farm goods this year under the trade deal, $12.5 billion more than in 2017. But some tariffs remain in place, and China has said its purchases need to make economic sense with both Washington and Beijing acknowledging that the timing of the sales depends on market conditions.

“We are already dealing with retaliatory tariffs and now coronavirus presents challenges for China to fill its obligations,” said Dan Kowalski, vice president of research at CoBank, a $145 billion lender to the agriculture industry. “If the dollar remains strong, that has tangible impacts on market conditions. And that could or could not play a part in China filling its purchases.”

Traders were already skeptical China would reach the phase one targets before the virus hit. Even the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s own export projections cast doubt on the deal. Now, with the Brazilian real and the Argentine peso hitting record lows against the dollar, the trade-deal targets are even more in doubt.

“We always have to be mindful that the Chinese are price buyers,” said Stephen Nicholson, a senior analyst for grains and oilseeds at Rabobank. “I don’t think that’s going to change under phase one. They are going to do what they do. I think they will continue to buy what they need and they will buy at the best price. It’s an ingrained behavior.”

For now, U.S. authorities are dismissing the currency threat. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said at a USDA forum last month that he expects China to live up to its pledges, and Ted McKinney, the undersecretary of agriculture for trade, added that their $36.5 billion commitment stands despite the dollar strength.

Gregg Doud, U.S. chief agricultural negotiator at U.S. Trade Representative, also dismissed the idea. But he delivered a scary prospect for American farmers already dealing with high debt, several years of low prices and piles of corn and soybeans from last year’s harvest still stashed in their bins.

“At least in my mind, as an old commodity analyst, I don’t think that’s an issue here,” Doud said at the USDA event. “It just means that as that gap gets further, the U.S. price has to come down to be competitive with what’s going on in South America.”

Brazil is already harvesting a record soybean crop and with a weaker real boosting farmer profits, the incentive will be there to expand plantings in the years to come. On Wednesday, Brazil’s economy posted a third consecutive year of sub-par growth.

“Maybe China doesn’t reach $36.5 billion,” said Dan Basse, president of consulting firm AgResource. “But I think if you were to ask the market today, and say it’s going to do the same as in 2017 — $24 billion, $28 billion — we’d probably be OK there.”

There’s no reason to sound the alarm bells at this point, said CoBank’s Kowalski. The lender believes China will make a “good faith” effort to meet the targets and said the nation will have a bigger opportunity to buy American farm goods in the second half of the year.

Concerns about the slowdown of the Chinese economy may also end up helping the nation meet its pledges. That’s because the agreement allows for nations to impose tariffs equivalent to the size of the damage without retaliation in the case of non-compliance.

“They signed an agreement, they know it’s enforceable,” Steve Censky, the USDA’s deputy secretary, said in an interview last month in Arlington, Virginia. “Given their economy and everything else, they don’t want to be back in the soup, battling the U.S. on tariffs.”