COVID-19 dominates markets and economies in March
Financial markets worldwide were impacted heavily by the COVID-19 pandemic as necessary lockdowns stress businesses and the economy, hopefully temporarily. The speed of the global spread of Corona pandemic took the world by surprise, along with high fatality rates. At this stage, there is significant fear across the world as to how long and deep the virus can spread. World leaders, including India, have decisively acted to ‘flatten the curve’ of the spread and thereby reducing the load on a healthcare system which is not geared to handle a large scale spread of the virus. With some signs of stability in countries like China, Singapore, Japan, Thailand, etc, there does seem to be some hope of the rate of spread to diminish in the coming weeks. Moreover, some experts believe the coming summer months might help along with a healthcare system which is better prepared than they were about two months back, with support from ‘social distancing’. Lockdowns, t...