A pedestrian wearing protective gear walks along Lujiazui financial district in Shanghai, China on March 17, 2020.
US stock futures were a hair's breadth from hitting session down limits. The growth-sensitive Australian dollar was crushed 4 percent to a more than 17-year low. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 5 percent to a four-year low, with Korea and Hong Kong leading losses. It has killed more than almost 9,000 people globally, infected more than 218,000 and prompted emergency lockdowns on a scale not seen in living memory.
Investors will be parsing US weekly jobless figures due at 1230GMT, and in the weeks to come to gauge the depth of layoffs.The selloff followed an attempt at stabilising in morning trade, with an ECB pledge to buy $820 billion in bonds through 2020 offering some support.The Reserve Bank of Australia also cut interest rates to a record-low 0.25 percent and announced an historic foray into quantitative easing after at an out-of-cycle meeting.
In currency markets, everything except the dollar and the euro collapsed. Sterling fell 1 percent to $1.1490.
So who's doing the buying?