Wall Street opens lower despite Fed’s new measures to address USD-funding shortage

• Fed announces establishment of temporary USD swap lines.
• Treasury Secretary Mnuchin says Treasury has no problem issuing more debt.
•  S&P 500 Financials Index erases more than 4.5% as worst-performer.

Wall Street’s main indexes opened the day sharply lower despite the Federal Reserve’s new measures to address the issue of USD-fuınding shortage in global markets. As of writing, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 2.75% on the day while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite were erasing 1.7% and 0.9%, respectively.

Flight-to-safety continues to weigh on stocks

The Fed said that it has established temporary USD swap lines with Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Korea, Mexico, Norway, New Zealand Singapore and Sweden in order to lessen strains in global USD funding markets.

Meanwhile, US Treasury Secretary Mnuchin noted that they will take advantage of lower interest rates to refinance “a lot of US debt” but failed to provide a boost to equity indexes.

Among the 11-major S&P 500 sectors, the Financials Index is down 4.8% as the worst performer on Thursday. Additionally, the Industrial Index is erasing 4.7%.