Investors sure seemed to like President Trump's speech on the government's coronavirus response plan.
U.S. markets yo-yoed back up on Friday afternoon, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average soaring 1,985 points, or 9.4 percent, its largest single-day point gain in history, reports CNBC. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite climbed 9.2 and 9.3 percent, respectively, their largest one-day gains since 2008.
The jump came at the end of a volatile week influenced by the global coronavirus outbreak; Thursday brought the most dramatic losses since the market crash of 1987. After a bounce back on Friday morning, stocks continued to rise as President Trump announced actions to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 across the country, like making 50,000 tests available next week and increasing oil purchases.
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MSNBC's Chris Hayes seemed to think Trump's main focus was on reviving markets, even down to the timing of the announcement event.
"The single most important thing to make clear today was what the timeline for scaling up testing capacity was and we still have no idea," wrote Hayes on Twitter. One thing that was made clear is that major corporations like CVS and Walmart, whose executives appeared at the press event with Trump, will be heavily involved in the federal response to the outbreak. It took just minutes for that fact to register among investors.
Read more at CNBC.
