These tensions plus news that China has dropped its annual growth target for the first time added to concern about the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, knocking oil prices down more than 5% and boosting demand for safe-havens such as US government bonds.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng index slid more than 5% to a seven-week low, MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 2.7%. Still, MSCI's world stock index, is up around 2.5% this week as central bank stimulus in the face of the coronavirus shock underpins investor sentiment. Reid noted that it took more than 3-1/2 years between September 2008 and 2012 to"achieve" the $4.5 trillion cumulative expansion in G10 central bank balance sheet assets seen over the last 12 weeks.