A late update from Wall Street, where the S&P 500 has closed 1.6% lower tonight.

And finally, here’s our news story on the financial markets’ dire start to 2020:

Tune in tomorrow to see if the second quarter of 2020 gets off to a better start. Goodnight! GW

One late development...JD Sports has become the latest store chain to stop paying rent to its landlords.

It’s another sign that the high street lockdown has a devastating impact on fashion retailers.

My colleague Zoe Wood explains:

JD confirmed that it had not paid the quarterly rent for its 390 UK stores which was due last week. The retailer is understood to be in discussions with its landlords about the next bill, which is due in June.

Last week, the value fashion chain Primark refused to pay £33m in rent after the closure of its UK stores due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The Swedish fashion retailer H&M is also pushing for waivers on its rent and service charge bill.

The sportswear giant’s stores in the UK, mainland Europe and the US all shut last week. In an update to investors it warned the shutdown would have a “significant impact” on its financial outlook.

Despite the recent easing of market jitters, investors should be cautious about the months ahead. Optimism that the Covid-19 crisis will soon be over could be badly misplaced.

So writes my colleague Nils Pratley tonight:

The rapid bounce-back theory rests on the idea that lockdowns will last only two or three months, at most, with no need to reimpose them.

Perhaps that will be accurate but, remember, the investment consensus eight weeks ago was that Covid-19 was mainly a China-only affair and would be over quickly. Projections have been made to look very silly very quickly in this crisis. It is why little should be read into Tuesday’s better-than-expected survey of business confidence in China: one unreliable piece of data does not imply a lasting rebound.

Nor do we know if governments’ support packages, though they seemed enormous on announcement, will be sufficient. Look at the calls for extra help already piling up at the UK Treasury’s door: even commercial landlords, who should be well placed to take some strain, are begging the state to cover shortfalls in their rental income.

What we know now is that there will be a big bill at the end. The UK Debt Management Office on Tuesday said it would raise £45bn just in April via sales of government debt, a stunning sum that compares with £9.5bn in the same month last year. In the coming financial year, the UK’s budget deficit could treble to £200bn, or 10% of GDP, the Institute of Fiscal Studies estimated last week. Meanwhile, companies, many of which were carrying too much debt in the first place, will be carrying even heavier levels. It all drags on investment.

More here:

Back on Wall Street, stocks have turned lower again.

The Dow’s currently down 191 points, or almost 0.9%, having been up 0.5% earlier.

But after a month of wild lurches - the Dow gained over 2100 points one day, and lost nearly 3,000 on another - such moves are most sedate.

FTSE 100-listed cruise operator Carnival has had a rotten quarter, down 73%.

And today, it admitted that it never recover after the coronavirus pandemic, as it sought needs $6bn (£4.8bn) in new funding.

Carnival, which was forced to suspend sailings this month, is looking to raise $3bn in bonds secured on its ships, a further $1.75bn in convertible bonds and $1.25bn through issuing new shares.

But it also warned that the illness and deaths caused by Covid-19 could have “a long-term impact on the appeal of our brands, which would diminish demand for vacations on our vessels.”

Italy’s main stock index suffered its worst quarter on record, and its worst month too, Reuters reports.

The FTSE MIB sank by 27% in the first three months of this year, and by 22% in March alone - as Rome was forced to impose ever-more-stringent lockdown rules in an attempt to slow the spread of Covid-19.

The FTSE 250 index of medium-sized, UK-focused companies had an even worse quarter!

It fell 31% in Q1, dragged down by UK retailers, transport firms, property groups and pub chains badly hit by the Covid-19 crisis

Louis Ashworth of The Telegraph has calculated that it’s the FTSE 250’s worst quarter on record.

In other banking news, Barclays is offering to pay staff triple their usual wage, if they’ll help deal with the surge in requests for mortgage holidays and emergency loans.

Some small comfort for UK investors: it’s worse in Brazil!

Neil Wilson of Markets.com also reckons the markets are calming down a little, but that doesn’t mean volatility is over....

March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. One can often twist an old saying to fit one’s narrative but in some ways that is indeed what we’ve seen in equity markets over the last month, although it depends on how you define roaring and bleating I suppose.

Despite a horrid quarter and a shocker of a month, there is something of relative calm descending on markets at the month-end. Call it exhaustion, but it is welcome respite from what has been about the worst bout of panic selling we have seen. Whilst the ‘08 and dotcom drawdowns were larger, it’s the speed at which we saw equities sold off earlier this month which was truly remarkable.

Volatility is declining in a way that will give hope, albeit we would tend to think that whilst the bottom has on balance likely been found for equity markets, it could well be felt a few more times. Daily ranges are tightening but resistance is holding.

The pound has also had a bad quarter.

Sterling started 2020 at $1.32 vs the US dollar, on relief that Britain wouldn’t crash out of the EU without a withdrawal agreement.

But it turned south this month, quickly sinking to just $1.14 (a 35-year low) amid a global scramble for dollars.

Sterling has recovered in recent days, to around $1.24 today -- down over 6% this year.

In March alone, the FTSE 100 sank by 14% - making it a really grim time for investors.

The Covid-19 stock market began in the last week of February, but really accelerated this month as the number of deaths and infections in Europe jumped.

As more governments imposed stringent lockdowns, investors ditched shares - leading to several days of Very Heavy Losses.

On Monday 9th March, the FTSE 100 posted its worst day since 2008, down 7.7%. Three days later, it had its worst slump since Black Monday itself.

The index then kept sinking, hitting 5,000 points two weeks ago (down from 7,400 in mid-February). But this proved a turning point. There have been more up days than down days recently....

The Stoxx 600, which includes the largest companies from across Europe, sank by just over 23% in the last quarter.

That’s its worst performance since 2002.

For obvious reasons, the travel and leisure sector had a brutal three months; stock slumped by 42%, the worst quarter on record, Reuters reports.

This chart shows how the FTSE 100 index has just been through its worst slump since ‘87:

There was a sudden flurry of stock-buying in the final minute of today’s session!

The FTSE 100 suddenly jumped, and was up exactly 100 points or 1.8% as the full-time whistle went. That lifts the index to 5663 points.

But we’re now in the closing auction, so we’ll have to see exactly where shares ended up.

David Madden of CMC Markets reports that investors turned a little more bullish this afternoon:

The World Health Organisation said the situation in Europe might be nearing its peak, and that helped market sentiment. The number of Covid-19 related deaths in Spain jumped by more than 11% in the past 24 hours, and that underlines the severity of the situation. Continental stocks are showing small gains this afternoon, while the FTSE 100 is firmly in positive territory. The UK market’s relatively large exposure to the natural resources sector has helped it stand-out against its eurozone counterparts.

The latest economic data from China paints a picture of a massive rebound in business activity in March. The manufacturing PMI and the non-manufacturing PMI readings were 52 and 52.3 respectively. Those figures are in stark contrast to the dreadful readings of 35.7 and 29.6 registered in February. It would appear that Beijing’s tough response to the covid-19 crisis has paid off.

As a result, we have seen a sizeable rally in mining and oil stocks today.

Investors in Europe are trying their hardest to end the quarter on a positive note.

The FTSE 100 is up 48 points or 0.9% in late trading, at 5612 points [still down over 25% this year].

Traders have taken some comfort from the stronger-than-expected Chinese PMI reports overnight. They showed manufacturers and services firms are growing again this month (after a serious slump in February).

Connor Campbell of SpreadEx points out that we get European manufacturing data for March tomorrow....

As markets begin to move from March’s bloody battleground to the April’s troubled waters, the Western markets strained to push higher.

Tuesday saw sentiment boosted by a pair of strong – some would say suspiciously so – PMIs from China. Well, Wednesday will see Europe and the US faced with their own final manufacturing and services readings for March, with the potential for downward revisions from the flash figures once the final week of the month is taken into account.

As things stand, Wall Street is going to rack up its worst quarter since October-December 2008 (when the S&P 500 fell 22.5%).

Wall Street has made a choppy start to the final trading day of the quarter.

The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones industrial average initially dropped, but are now rallying slightly - with the Dow up 100 points or 0.45%.

But the big picture is that the Dow has lost 21% this quarter, with the S&P 500 down 18.5%.

Reuters has calculated that the S&P 500 is on track for its worst first quarter since 1938.

European stock markets have suffered heavy losses this quarter too, with the Stoxx 600 index down over 23%.

That’s would equal its worst quarter in over 17 years, going back to July-September 2002 (when it fell by 23.3%).

Here’s Reuters’ take:

“There appears to be light at the end of the tunnel, but that’s not to say this health crisis is completely done and dusted,” said David Madden, an analyst at CMC Markets in London.

“There’s probably a few traders saying, ‘I know stocks are really cheap’, but at the same time don’t want to go in and buy just yet because the health crisis doesn’t appear to be getting any better.”

The benchmark index was still set to post its worst quarter in nearly two decades, as the number of COVID-19 cases continued to rise in Europe and several nations extended lockdown measures that have halted business activity and crushed sentiment.

After more number-crunching, here’s a chart showing the FTSE 100’s worst, and best, quarters since 1984.

As you can see, the last three months have only been ‘beaten’ by Black Monday in October 1987:

The FTSE 100 wasn’t alone, of course. All the world’s stock markets suffered a torrid quarter, with Asia-Pacific stocks down roughly 20%.

As Bloomberg’s David Ingles points out, both the size and the speed of this selloff has been extraordinary:

I’ve dug around in our Refinitiv terminal to find the FTSE 100’s worst quarters since it was created in 1984

As you can see, the last three months are almost unprecedented:

• October-December 1987: Down 27.6%
• January-March 2020: Down 26% (but still trading until 4.30pm today...)
• July-September 2002: Down 20%
• July-September 1990: Down 16.1%
• July-September 2011: Down 13.7%
• April-June 2010: Down 13.4%
• July-September 1998: Down 13.1%
• July-September 2001: Down 13.1%
• July-September 2008: Down 12.8%
• January-March 2008: Down 11.7%

That 1987 crash took the FTSE 100 down to 1,713 points -- so anyone who invested then has seen their capital more than triple, plus enjoyed many years of dividends.

Lloyds has backed down amid fierce criticism of UK banks taking personal guarantees from SME bosses in return for loans during the Covid-19 crisis:

It says:

“We understand the challenges facing our customers at the moment and can confirm that, for the period of the Government CBILS scheme, for businesses that need support due to the Coronavirus outbreak, we will not seek personal guarantees for any new financing that we approve.

This applies to both our normal banking lending and customers who are eligible for the CBILS scheme.”

The early rally has rather tailed off, as investors break for lunch (“Where do you fancy today, darling? “How about the kitchen?”).

The FTSE 100 is still up, but only 33 points or 0.6% at 5598.

The smaller FTSE 250 index is looking healthier (for a change), up 2.4% today.

The Resolution Foundation thinktank has produced a new report on the economic impact of Covid-19 in the UK, and it confirms that the economy has entered a very sharp downturn:

Mihir Kapadia, the CEO of Sun Global Investments, is also cheered by the surprise jump in Chinese factory output this month:

“China has demonstrated that economies can bounce back into action if citizens comply to lockdowns for controlling the pandemic and flattening the curve.

The official Chinese PMI rebounded in March from last months record lows, surging back to 53 from a record low of 28.9 in February, Manufacturing rose to 52.0 from 35.7 and construction rose to 52.3.

But other countries are some way from such a recovery, he adds:

While its an astounding ‘V’ shape recovery from China, the pandemic is far from over in Europe and now has established firmly in the United States.

We still have long months of battle as the US has just started dealing with it. Global economic growth and trade will continue to be affected until the disease is contained across the world. But as China shows, there is hope at the end of the tunnel.”

Just in: Inflation across the eurozone slowed this month, mainly due to cheaper oil prices.

Statistics body Eurostat reports that consumer prices only rose by 0.7% year-on-year in March, down from 1.2% annual growth in February.

Although food prices rose, energy slumped due to the recent crash in oil.

March was a grim time for investors, but a record month for the UK supermarkets.

Data firm Kantar has reported that grocery sales surged by 20.6% in the four weeks to 22 March, as shoppers stockpiled essential goods ahead of the government’s lockdown.

According to Kantar, people shopped more frequently and bought more each trip - leading to empty shelves of pasta, tinned tomatoes and lentils, for example.

Tesco, Britain’s largest supermarket, grew its sales by 5.5% while Sainsbury’s were up 7.4%, Asda gained 4.9% while Morrisons sales rose by 4.6%.

Germany’s latest German jobless figure are out.... and they tell us disappointingly little.

The Federal Labor Office reports that German unemployment rose by 1,000 in March, to 2.267 million. But, the data only covers the days to March 12 - so it doesn’t actually show the impact of the coronavirus shutdown.

Economists has expected a 29,000 increase, which would have nudged the jobless rate up from 5% to 5.1%.

This shows the difficulty economists will face when trying to understand the impact of Covid-19. They want up-to-date data from March, but collecting such information will be hard when businesses are shut down and workers are self-isolating at home.

Back in the UK, the Covid-19 crisis has forced British Airways to suspend all flights from Gatwick, London’s second biggest airport.

My colleague Julia Kollewe explains:

The move comes a day after easyJet grounded its entire fleet of aircraft for at least two months. Demand for travel has collapsed in recent weeks as many countries are in partial or full lockdown, forcing airlines to cancel thousands of flights.

BA, which is still running flights to and from Heathrow, said it would contact customers to discuss their options.

A BA spokesman said: “Due to the considerable restrictions and challenging market environment, like many other airlines we will temporarily suspend our flying schedule at Gatwick.”

The key message from today’s Chinese PMI reports is that March was a rather better month than February.

Simon Rabinovitch of the Economist has tweeted that it’s a mistake to assume everything is fixed, or to simply dismiss the data:

Some of the companies most hit by the Covid-19 crisis are leading the stock markets risers today.

Engineering group Melrose, which issued a profits warning late yesterday, is leading the way (up 16%, having fallen 17% on Monday). Although it scrapped its dividend last night, Melrose also reported that its banks had waived a covenant on its debts, meaning it shouldn’t face a financial crunch later this year.

Flutter, whose Paddy Power and Betfair divisions have been hurt by sporting cancellations are also in the top risers, along with cruise operator Carnival (whose shares are down some 70% this year) and British Airways parent company IAG.

It’s early days, but the FTSE 100 share index is on track for its 7th day of gains out of 9 sessions.

The Footsie is currently more than 10% higher than on Monday March 23rd, when it closed below 5,000 points. But also still roughly 23% below its mid-February levels.

Fiona Cincotta of City Index says the mood is improving, partly helped by the improving Chinese economic data this morning.

After a stronger finish in Europe on Monday, European stocks have jumped higher on the open again today. The mood in the market is showing signs of improving despite mixed headlines. With equities markets now moving higher for 4 of the past 5 sessions investors are debating whether there are grounds for a sustained move higher.

Chinese factory data overnight gave a flicker of hope that the world’s second largest economy is firing back up, despite large parts of the world grinding to a halt. Comments by the WHO that the coronavirus outbreak in Europe may be approaching its peak is also boosting sentiment and comes as Italy sees the smallest number of new cases in two weeks.

However, it is still far too soon to be singing victory. At the same time that the outbreak in Europe is showing signs of stabilising, restrictions on public life are also being ramped up meaning that there is still a lot of economic pain to get through. The coronavirus outbreak in the US is also escalating at a frightening rate. Deaths there have already reached 3000

Back in the City, advertising giant WPP has become the latest major firm to scrap its dividend and slash executive pay due to Covid-19.

WPP also reported a slump in revenues from China earlier this year (so will be hoping that March’s PMIs herald better luck ahead).

Analysts at Danske Bank are also encouraged to see China’s Purchasing Managers Index surge to 53 in March, from 28.9 in February (a quite astonishing rebound).

The jump in China’s PMI survey is an encouraging sign, say economists and analysts - but it certainly doesn’t mean the crisis is over.

Here’s some early reaction:

China’s PMI figures look like a classic V-shaped recovery:

But be cautious. It’s telling us that factories and services firms strengthened in March compared to February.

China’s statistics body also warns that the global coronavirus pandemic is hurting the world economy.

Zhao Qinghe, the NBS’s senior statistician, says:

The epidemic is accelerating and spreading around the world, severely impacting global economic growth and trade.

“There is also pressure on China’s epidemic control from incoming cases, so the recovery of economic growth and supply chains face new challenges.”