(Bloomberg) -- For passengers on a Holland America Line cruise ship, a fun-filled voyage on the luxury liner is quickly turning into a nightmare with deteriorating conditions on board and fears of a full-blown coronavirus outbreak after four travelers died and two others were infected.“We are stuck on this death ship,” said Yadira Garza, who is on board with her newly-wed husband. “We are freaked out and terrified that we will be infected too. It’s just a matter of time if we stay on the ship.”Passengers on the Zaandam, currently off the coast of Panama, say they are desperate to get off the liner after Chile wouldn’t allow the vessel to dock. The company also said all ports on the ship’s route have also refused entry. Guests and their family members have taken to Twitter to plead for help.Then came some good news on Saturday: the ship’s captain announced Holland America...
High-profile investors from BlackRock Inc to billionaire William Ackman have turned more bullish on equities in recent days, as unprecedented stimulus from the Federal Reserve, a $2.2 trillion stimulus bill signed Friday, and a call by President Donald Trump to get the U.S. back to work in weeks rather than months sparked the biggest weekly rally in the Dow Jones Industrial Average since 1938. "People are trying to time the bottom and that's indicative of an early bear market, when people have hope," said Richard Bernstein, chief executive officer of Richard Bernstein Advisors. Bernstein said he was a "data hawk" and was looking for a combination of "improving fundamentals" - eyeing the basic health of the asset, rather than trading patterns - and "total disbelief," adding that in 2009 investors did not believe the bull market was real....
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- At the point we’re now at, postponing the oil-price war won’t make a lot of difference for an industry that’s already breaking down under the weight of demand destruction. It’s too late to use diplomacy and artful negotiations to share the burden of output cuts that are now inevitable.The pumping free-for-all unleashed by Saudi Arabia and Russia is important for the long-term shape of the oil industry, but, as my colleague Javier Blas pointed out here, it’s a sideshow to the havoc being wrought by the lockdowns crippling economies worldwide in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Forecasts of a catastrophic drop in oil demand abound, with estimates of a whopping 20% year-on-year reduction in global consumption in April becoming more common. That’s 20 million barrels a day, equivalent to the entire consumption of the United States.It would be impossible for any small group of producers to mitigate that kind of impact by reducing output, unless Saudi Arabia and Russia were...
(Bloomberg) -- The euro had its best week in more than a decade and that may be as good as it gets. Further gains could be hard to materialize as markets stabilize, with the dollar’s headwinds now largely priced in.Options traders see a near-term advance for the greenback, which often acts as a haven during crises, with the pandemic still raging. Meanwhile, the technical picture for the euro has become nuanced, with Fibonacci levels suggesting rallies may be capped, even as the relative strength index and Bloomberg’s fear-greed indicator hint at further gains.Add that quarter-end flows are seen as greenback-supportive and that liquidity at the end of the month could suffer given that many traders are working from home, and the euro’s rise may come to an abrupt end. The U.S. currency may gain as sizable orders are expected to support until Tuesday, according to two traders in Europe, who asked...
