Wall Street’s main indexes were set to open lower on Thursday after data confirmed the U.S. economy in the second quarter suffered its steepest contraction since the Great Depression due to COVID-19 shutdowns. Second quarter U.S. GDP numbers revealed a record 33% contraction.
The Labor Department said initial weekly jobless claims last week came in at 1.434 million, slightly better than expectations as economists polled by Dow Jones foresaw 1.45 million. It was the 19th straight week in which initial claims totaled at least 1 million and the second consecutive week in which initial claims rose after declining for 15 straight weeks.
Medha Singh and Devik Jain for Reuters:
Gross domestic product collapsed at a 32.9% annualized rate last quarter, a Commerce Department report showed, as business activity came to an abrupt halt due to efforts to slow the virus outbreak.
Corporate earnings have tended to be better than expectations so far, but the scale of the economic damage from the crisis, and likelihood that it will drag on are again giving traders pause for thought.
Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Alphabet Inc and Facebook Inc will post results at the same time for the first time later on Thursday… Shares of the companies, which have a combined market value of about $5 trillion or almost a fifth of the whole S&P 500, fell between 0.4% and 0.9% in premarket.
MacDailyNews Take: We’re lucky the Q2 U.S. contraction wasn’t worse!
MacDailyNews Note: Apple will report fiscal Q3 2020 earnings for the three months ending in June on Thursday, July 30th after market close (we’ll have Apple’s results for you that day right around 4:30pm EDT / 1:30pm PDT, as usual). We’ll also be covering Apple’s conference call with analysts with live notes starting at 5:00pm EDT / 2:00pm PDT.
We never should’ve closed down for more than the original 2 weeks. That much is now painfully obvious to rational, thinking people.
The elderly and the sick should have been and continue to be quarantined without destroying the economy – hurting and killing untold numbers of people.
The rest of us should have been back to work months ago, socially distancing, washing hands, wearing masks, etc.
“We never should’ve closed down for more than the original 2 weeks. That much is now painfully obvious to rational, thinking people.”
Only to a fool.
If the US had only shut down for two weeks the US would have had at least 500K dead of the virus before the US shut down completely otherwise millions would die.
These prolonged, illogical shutdowns are the greatest folly of modern times and history will eventually record them as such.
OPEN UP! It’s too late for far too many, but OPEN UP, morons!
First,
Roughly 31% of senior citizens live in a household with younger family members. How are they to quarantine? Another 30% live alone. Where is the infrastructure to provide them with food, medical care, and other necessities while in isolation?
I know that it may be hard for you to understand, but most older Americans cannot leave their children to live in the town house while they retreat to the lake house where they can live on Amazon deliveries purchased from an effectively unlimited retirement account.
Younger Americans with a known health condition have even fewer choices and those with undiagnosed conditions have no options at all.
Your “solution” also assumes that we can safely ignore the long-term consequences for young healthy individuals who have been infected, and that those consequences will not affect the economy.
Madness…..
“MacDailyNews Take: We’re lucky the U.S. contraction wasn’t worse.”
This is something you say AFTER it’s over. Industries like the airlines, auto and retail are shrinking. Millions will have no job to go back too and people are standing in line for virus tests and food donations every week.
“MacDailyNews Take: We’re lucky the U.S. contraction wasn’t worse.”
Thur July 30, 2020
“Delta CEO sends staff memo thanking 17,000 employees for leaving, says it gets airline closer to ‘minimizing furloughs’”
Dead Vision Donald to states: “I am not providing any national leadership. You are on your own. Use the “State’s Rights” principle to fight for great medical devices like in the superb action, adventure, drama “Game of Thrones” where clans, in our case the 50 states, fight for beautiful dominance to medical solutions in our great America to treat sick individuals — and there are not that many — while a mutated enemy, some say, (COVID-19) returns after being (possibly) dormant for millennia. You are going to beat it down on your own. I know you can.”