Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news
- Pound jumps as risk of negative interest rates drops
- Bank of England: Six months to prepare for possible negative rates
- Experts suggest they may not be needed if economy recovers
- BoE left interest rates on hold today
Earlier:
- UK car sales fell 39.5% in January
- Worst start to a year since 1970
- UK construction output dipped last month too
Back in the US, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has warned there are “tough months ahead” before the US economy gets to the other side of the coronavirus-related crisis.
She also said that she and financial market regulators needed to “understand deeply” what happened in the trading frenzy involving GameStop and other retail stocks in recent days before taking any action.
“We really need to make sure that our financial markets are functioning properly, efficiently and that investors are protected.”
Related: Janet Yellen warns of 'tough months ahead' for Covid-hit US economy
It appears that there is very high leverage among many, many retail investors in the US, and maybe around all parts of the world as well.
Obviously that is very high risk and that puts investors at very high risk of losing their money frankly.
One of the things we do have to watch is this whole question about margin calls on retail brokerage platforms. Clearing houses of course have to make margin calls, that’s entirely the right thing to do.
But the retail brokerage platforms have to be ready for those and have to stress test their own position, and obviously the substantial price volatility in the very high level of volume has caused, you know, those bad margin calls to happen.
As well as pushing up unemployment, the pandemic has also lead to longer working hours for those doing their jobs from home during the lockdown.
My colleague Hilary Osborne explains:
Employees who work from home are spending longer at their desks and facing a bigger workload than before the Covid pandemic hit, two sets of research have suggested.
The average length of time an employee working from home in the UK, Austria, Canada and the US is logged on at their computer has increased by more than two hours a day since the coronavirus crisis, according to data from the business support company NordVPN Teams.
Related: Home workers putting in more hours since Covid, research shows