Asia's stock markets slipped, bonds rose and the United States (US) dollar was firm on Thursday as surging US coronavirus cases, global trade tensions and an International Monetary Fund downgrade to economic projections knocked confidence in a recovery.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.7 per cent, Tokyo's Nikkei slumped 1.4 per cent and Australia's ASX 200 tumbled 1.8 per cent. US stock futures also declined 0.7 per cent following on from an overnight slide on Wall Street.
Markets in Hong Kong and mainland China are closed for public holidays on Thursday.
Florida, Oklahoma and South Carolina reported record increases in new cases on Wednesday. Seven other states had record highs earlier in the week and Australia posted its biggest daily rise in infections in two months.
The governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut ordered travellers from nine other states to quarantine on arrival, a worry for investors who had mostly been expecting an end to pandemic restrictions.
Texas is also facing a “massive outbreak” and authorities are considering localised restrictions, Governor Greg Abbott said in a television interview.
Australian airline Qantas said on Thursday it doesn't expect sizeable international operations until at least July 2021, as the carrier announced plans to sack a fifth of its workforce and raise $1.3 billion to stay afloat.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said it now expects a deeper global recession, with output to shrink 4.9 per cent this year, much sharper than the 3.0 per cent contraction predicted in April.
“There is a little bit of reality bites coming,” said Damian Rooney, senior instructional salesman at stockbroker Argonaut in Perth.
“I don't think there was a particular straw that broke the camel's back, but people are a little bit twitchy - there are a lot of reasons to be pretty cautious.”
Oil prices, a proxy for global energy consumption and economic growth, nursed losses following a 5 per cent tumble overnight as US crude storage hit another record and demand worries resurfaced.
The dollar clung on to broad overnight gains which had lifted it from near a two-week low.
Yields on benchmark 10-year US Treasuries fell to a one-week low of 0.6724 per cent.
Handbrake
Worries were even more pronounced on Wall Street overnight, and pulled major indexes back to flat for the month.
The S&P 500 fell 2.6 per cent overnight and the Nasdaq Composite snapped eight sessions of gains and slipped 2.2 per cent.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 2.72 per cent with retail-investor darlings in the travel sector hammered.
Anxiety in markets is likely to remain heightened ahead of US jobless claims data due at 1230 GMT, along with virus case figures, and confidence could be dented by disappointment on either count.
“Any improvement in jobs might be counteracted if there is another pickup in the case load in the United States,” said Kyle Rodda, market analyst at brokerage IG in Melbourne.
“It's a potential handbrake on the growth rebound story.”
On top of virus concerns, worrying signals on the trade front have unnerved investors.
The US has added items valued at $3.1 billion to a list of European goods eligible to be hit with import duties, as it seeks to keep the pressure on in a long-running dispute over aircraft subsidies.
The Trump administration has also determined that Chinese firms, including Huawei and video surveillance company Hikvision , are owned or controlled by the Chinese military, laying the groundwork for sanctions and fresh US-China tension.