Coronavirus: US investor looks for limited opening of economy ‘in one to two weeks’

The US economy may be due to open in only one to two weeks, a top US financial strategist has predicted on Tuesday, according to CNBC.

The US economy has come to a virtual standstill because of lockdowns and social distancing measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus. The country leads in number of infections globally with nearly 370,000 recorded cases.

“We believe we’ve seen a peak in new case growth in the US three to four days ago, and then deaths will peak in about a week, so we look for a limited reopening of the economy in one to weeks,” Marko Kolanovic, a highly respected quant analyst at investment bank JP Morgan, was reported as saying.

Financial markets have plummeted worldwide as the coronavirus has severely curtailed forecasts for economic growth. Economists already expect the coming economic collapse to dwarf the scale of the recession caused by the banking crisis in 2008.

Kolanovic is bullish on market returns however, noting, “We think we will be able to recover the losses in equities sometime next year.”

US President Donald Trump has previously pressed the case for the economy to open by Easter, which will be celebrated on April 12.

“I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter,” he said on Fox in late March.

On Saturday, Trump again pushed for the economy to open later this week, saying, “The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself. We've got to get our country open.”

In the US, jobless claims surged to over 6.6 million in the week ending March 28, more than twice as high as the previous record set the week before.

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