A man wearing a facemask amid concerns over the spread of the Covid-19 novel coronavirus, walks past a stock market display board showing movements of the Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index at a shopping mall in Bangkok March 15, 2020. — AFP pic
As is often the case, stock markets rally on hopes of good news and then fall back when the anticipation becomes reality. Approaching the half-way mark, London’s FTSE 100 rose 0.2 per cent, with support coming from a sliding pound boosting share values of multinationals trading on the benchmark index.
Elsewhere in trading, oil prices slipped after Opec and other major producers failed to reach an agreement on extending output cuts that have provided support to the commodity through the pandemic.Today, Britain became the first western country to approve a Covid-19 vaccine for general use, in a major advance for humanity’s fightback against the coronavirus.