By Geoffrey Smith
U.S. stock markets opened lower again on Thursday, albeit selling was more moderate than on Wednesday after moves by U.S. government, Federal Reserve and global central banks all helped to relieve some of the immediate liquidity stress in financial markets across the world.
Neither fiscal nor monetary stimulus measures are currently able to outweigh the increasing signs of a sharp economic slowdown. U.S. initial jobless claims skyrocketed to 280,000 last week to their highest in two and a half years.
By 09:33 AM ET (1333 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 404 points or 2.03%. The S&P 500 was down 1.8% and the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.7%.
The Dow had hit fallen 6.3% on Wednesday to its lowest level since December 2016 amid widespread distressed selling of a kind hardly seen since the 2008/9 financial crisis.
The market was supported by a bounce in oil prices, as U.S. crude futures rebounded from extremely oversold levels. There was, however, no news to suggest an early end to the price war that broke out earlier in the month with the collapse of the OPEC+ deal on output restraint.
