By Yasin Ebrahim
The Dow on Tuesday bounced back from its biggest one-day percentage slump since the 1987 market crash as U.S. stimulus efforts to prop up the lending market and fiscal initiatives to ease the financial burden on Americans improved sentiment, though a fivefold surge in U.S. Covid-19 infections kept gains in check.
The Dow jumped 2.34%, theS&P 500 gained 3.95% the Nasdaq Composite added 3.9%.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday that the Trump administration was mulling plans to hand out emergency funds in the form of checks to Americans "immediately," to ease the burden stemming from the ongoing Covid-19 virus.
In another effort to support the broader economy, the U.S. Treasury approved the Federal Reserve plans to form a commercial paper funding facility to avert a liquidity crisis and "support families, businesses and jobs across the economy."
The stimulus measures arrived at a time when the Trump administration is ramping up measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S., where infections have topped 5,000, compared with just 1,000 last week.
The rebound was led by utilities, widely viewed as a fixed-income proxy, that tend to do well in a falling interest rate environment.
Boeing (NYSE:BA), meanwhile, which had been down as much as 22% amid a rating downgrade cut losses to trade down 12%.
