Asian stocks markets fell further Wednesday as oil prices recovered some of their record-setting losses amid anxiety about the coronavirus pandemic’s mounting economic damage.
Asian Stocks
- Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 fell 1.2% to 19,050.33.
- Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 0.7% at 23,626.04.
- The Shanghai Composite Index was off 2 points at 2,824.91.
- The Kospi in Seoul tumbled 1% to 1,861.04 and Sydney’s S&P-ASX 200 lost 0.7% to 5,185.10.
- New Zealand’s main index fell 1.4% and Singapore was down 1.3%.
Currency
- The dollar gained to 107.75 yen from Tuesday’s 107.68 yen. The euro was unchanged at $1.0853.
Oil Price
The price of a barrel of the benchmark grade of U.S. oil to be delivered in June lost 23 cents to $12.34 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It plunged 43% the previous session to $11.57.
On Monday, the price of a U.S. barrel to be delivered next month fell to below zero. That meant traders were paying others to take it off their hands so they wouldn’t need to find places to store the swelling surplus.
The price for oil to be delivered in June didn’t hit zero, partly because storage isn’t as pressing a problem.
Brent crude, the price standard for international oils, lost another 76 cents to $18.57 per barrel in London. On Tuesday, it fell 24.4% to $19.33.
