15.07. Raoul Pal nails it:

This does remind me a bit of 2007/2008 when first we saw Iceland go, then Northern Rock and the UK banking crisis along with the US mortgage lenders and then it hit Wall St and the global economy fell apart…

This virus feels like a similar rolling contagion – a spreading cause and effect.  […]

The next 30 days are going to be rough as f.

14.43. Yeap.

Absent some serious money-printing from the Fed, it doesn’t look like the S&P 500 is going to see the second shoulder of the famous ‘head and shoulders’ pattern. The S&P 500, which recently peaked at an all-time high of 3394, has slumped in early trading to 3254 as of 14.46 GMT, a decline of around two-and-a-half percentage points.

The Dow Jones briefly came within a whisker of a 1000-point drop, before rallying to around 750 points lower.

14.34. Reuters is predicting a 800-point plunge as US opening nears. This comes after plunges of over three percent in the major US stock markets yesterday.

11.40. With news of a widespread Coronavirus outbreak in Italy, the Italian stock market is among the worst hit this morning.

As of 11.40am, the FTSE MIB index was down 4.60% after collapsing in early trading.

One cannot helping thinking that the Italians only have themselves to blame for this situation. China Southern Airlines flight to Rome was one of the last international flights to be cancelled out of Wuhan, even after the extent of the outbreak in Wuhan became known.

10.40. Stock markets and US futures are taking a battering as markets finally come to terms with the impact of the Coronavirus Outbreak on the global economy.

The FTSE 100, which opened at 7404 had crashed to a low of 7154 at 9.41am, and as of 10.40am had only risen marginally to 7162, representing a decline of 3.62%.

Other European exchanges are posting similar declines.

US futures are a little stronger in the 2-3% down, but all attention will be on the opening of US markets at 14.30 UTC.