Pedestrians walk in front of a quotation board displaying stock prices on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Tokyo on March 26, 2020.
The tankan measures corporate sentiment by subtracting the number of companies saying business conditions are negative from those responding they are positive. The S&P 500 dropped a final 1.6 percent, bringing its loss for the first three months of the year to 20 percent as predictions for the looming recession caused by the coronavirus outbreak got even direr. Stocks haven’t had this bad a quarter since the last time economists were talking about the worst downturn since the Great Depression, when the S&P 500 lost 22.6 percent at the end of 2008.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average of 30 US blue-chip stocks dropped 23.2 percent for its worst quarter since 1987. Congress, meanwhile, approved a $2.2 trillion rescue plan for the economy, and leaders are already discussing the possibility of another round of aid.“We’re kind of on this little milestone journey with markets,” said Brent Schutte, chief investment strategist at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. “First, we get the economic plan in place, then we have to start to see some of the containment actions pay off. At some point it’s going to be how do we get back to work.