Introduction
In the past few weeks, the constant growing uncertainty around COVID-19 has rattle investors’ confidence and led to a global panic with massive repercussions on markets. World equities are now down over 30 percent since their February peak, and global stock and bond markets have lost $15 trillion of ‘paper wealth’ in the past month, erasing all their gains from December 2018 lows (figure 1, left frame).
As a consequence, central banks took coordinated actions to immediately ease financial conditions and bring back confidence in the market:
- The Fed cut interest rates by 150bps