Eoin Treacy's view

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Economists had a broad range of forecasts for when the Fed would stop buying Treasury bills, though June 2020 received the highest response at 43%. Respondents overwhelmingly expected officials will taper the monthly purchases rather than stop them suddenly. The Fed has been buying $60 billion in T-bills each month since October.

A scarcity of bank reserves was blamed for an unexpected spike in overnight funding rates in September. This led the fed funds rate to stray briefly out of its target range. The new cash created by the Fed’s T-bill purchases has since relieved that scarcity. The Fed, intent on ensuring an ample supply of reserves, has said it will continue the purchases at least into the second quarter.

Eoin Treacy's view

The news headlines are full of news about the coronavirus and the number of countries where it has been found continues to rise every day. That injected a degree of caution in the markets that was not present a week ago. The clearest effects are evident in safe haven assets where Treasuries, precious metals and the Dollar have steadied.

China will introduce new measures to aggressively cut back on its use of plastic, its first such move in more than a decade as booming e-commerce and food deliveries dramatically increase the country’s production of plastic waste.

In recent years, Beijing has stepped up efforts to reduce waste and pollution, introducing measures such as trash sorting and halting imports of recycling.

“China has used too much plastic,” said William Liu, senior consultant at energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie. “Everyone is calling for more environment-friendly development.”

By the end of this year, nonbiodegradable plastic bags will be largely banned from major cities, and single-use straws will be prohibited in restaurants across the country, Beijing’s top economic-planning office and its Environment Ministry said on Sunday. The ban will extend to all cities and towns by 2022 and to markets selling fresh produce by 2025.

Eoin Treacy's view

The spectacle of business titans fawning over Greta Thunberg and feigning concern at the issues she champions while simultaneously giving a warm welcome to President Trump is yet another example of the virtue signalling designed to impress electorates all over the world.

“We don’t expect Novavax will run human trials without non-dilutive government funding,” Ladenburg Thalmann’s Michael Higgens wrote in a note. “The timing for such support in our view depends on how severe and uncontrolled the 2019-nCoV becomes.”

Moderna Inc. MRNA, -0.95%  said it is working with the National Institutes of Health on a potential vaccine response, saying its “vaccine technology could serve as a rapid and flexible platform that may be useful in responding to newly emerging viral threats.” Moderna’s stock was up 10%.

NanoViricides Inc. NNVC, +75.32%  said it has raised $7.5 million in an offering of 2.5 million shares at a price of $3 per share. Its stock was down 55% in morning trading, after gaining 153% on Monday.

The company had also worked on treatments for MERS and the Ebola virus. NanoViricides president Anil Diwan said in an email that the company believes that the drugs “we had previously developed are worth testing against the Wuhan virus and are likely to work against it.”

Eoin Treacy's view

There isn’t a lot of money in cures because you don’t get repeat customers. The whole point of the business is to ensure you run out of customers. That’s not a great business model which is why conventional pharmaceutical companies generally eschew developed vaccines. The small companies that do concentrate on this field generally rely on fear of a global pandemic to generate the investment capital to continue working on their research. That was certainly the case with Ebola and this week saw a significant uptick in share issuance.

Eoin Treacy's view

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