Market Brief: May 8, 2020

The Labor Department said Friday that the job losses in April followed a downwardly revised loss of 870,000 in March. So far, about one in five workers are unemployed.

Investors knew this would be one of the worst jobs reports in history. The decline in nonfarm payrolls for April is about three times as bad as the jobs lost over the entire Great Recession, with the depth of the losses not seen since the Great Depression. But the headline number was about in line with the 21 million job losses economists predicted, and the unemployment rate—at least on the surface—looks not as bad as feared.

The approval came less than a week after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued its own emergency use authorization for remdesivir in Covid-19 patients. Japan acted extraordinarily quickly: Gilead submitted its application with the regulator only on Monday.

As of April 30, Royal Caribbean had about $2.3 billion of cash and cash equivalents, the company said Friday in an update of its financial situation. It added that it’s considering seeking additional financing sources, but it did not elaborate.

The announcement came as the company’s theme park in China—Shanghai Disneyland—is busy preparing for a reopening on May 11 after a four-month shutdown. Tickets for the reopening—with limited capacity under government regulations—sold out in minutes after bookings started Friday 8 a.m. local time, a sign that Chinese consumers are ready to pull out their wallets for the entertainment giant as the nation recovers from the coronavirus pandemic.

Cronos stock was down 27% for the year at Thursday’s closing price of $5.59. In Friday afternoon trading, shares were down more than 4%. With its balance sheet still boasting $1.3 billion in cash from Altria, investors still award Toronto-based Cronos a $2 billion market capitalization.

Normally, its quarterly report would need to be filed by June 11 under the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rules. But late Thursday it announced a modified schedule because of business disruptions, store closures, and employee furloughs brought about by the coronavirus pandemic. Macy’s now plans to release its full results and hold an investor call on July 1, the company said.

The study wasn’t randomized, and had several limitations associated with observational studies. But it is the latest in a series of studies that have served to tamp down early excitement over the drug, which was touted heavily by some commentators and by public officials, including President Donald Trump.

As always with Bitcoin, there are several possible explanations for the surge, of varying plausibility. But a look at the price chart makes it seem that Bitcoin’s move is closely correlated with swings in most other risky assets, which have rebounded aggressively in the past month after falling in March.

UnitedHealth’s move, which it said aims to support its customers during the pandemic, will put pressure on other insurers to do the same.

For one thing, it has long been the conventional wisdom that one of the few reasons people have hung on to their pay-TV subscriptions is access to live sports. With almost all professional and college sporting events shut down, that argument carries no weight. Meanwhile, with U.S. unemployment at the highest rate since the Great Depression, and so many options for free or low-cost subscription streaming video, Americans are fleeing pay TV at a record rate.