market update

Despite continuous fears of a worsening of the looming economic crisis, governments around the globe have been slow to roll out expanding measures to revive companies and the overall economy. In the UK, ... Rishi Sunak has come under fire for providing limited support to the more well-off industries, whereas smaller business owners have failed to meet the rigid criteria of the handful of emergency loan schemes at their disposal. In France, a solidarity fund was launched to secure support for small companies. Already 1bn euros have been dispensed to companies, with another 6 bn euros available to ventures struggling under the weight of the economy stalling under the pandemic.

In other news, the data privacy activist Johnny Ryan launched on Tuesday a complaint to the European Commission for failing to mete out sufficient fines to tech companies breaking GDPR. Along with an accusation that national governments are not taking their responsibilities to punish companies breaking their customers' privacy, the tech and data gathering guru Ryan explored how much staff in every EU country was dedicated to enforcing to him. According to him and the record low numbers of specialists trained to establish whether GDPR is being respected in varied EU countries, governments across the EU have not managed to provide regulatory agencies with sufficient fire power to regulate Big Tech.

The Bank of Japan has assured financiers it is going to buy an unlimited amount of government bonds and keep interests low.

Interests edged up to 1.4 per cent on Tuesday, after a large drop the previous day and a historic low in recent weeks. Crude oil prices fell to negative territory, a first in the market's history, and natural gas dipped to $.5 per barrel, according to the latest oil index. Demand for oil continues to slip, with about one third of global demand erased in recent months. Production of oil has persevered, with countries like Saudi Arabia, the US and Russia keeping their levels of fracking and delivery high. International authorities are worried that this ramping up of production capacity will, once again, push oil prices into the negative, whereas leading oil-producing countries have declared they are waging a war over how to better control prices. Indexes around crude surged in the early morning, only to slide again at the end of the day. Overall S&P dropped below .5 and then swung back to +5 in the afternoon.