On the eve of initial jobless claims numbers, stocks fell with each of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq posting their largest one-day declines since March 18 as coronavirus concerns continued to weigh on investors.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Welcome to The Final Round. I'm Akiko Fujita, and we are counting down to the closing bell right now. A new quarter, but feels like the same story today. The Dow is down more than 1,000 points. We've really seen the losses accelerate within the last hour. Right now, trading at 20,913.

The NASDAQ, also, down about 4%, and the S&P 500, down 4.5%. Looking across the sectors, a lot of familiar names we're seeing sell off today. Carnival, a big laggard after the company announced that they would be going to the capital markets to raise about $6 billion. That stock down more than 30%.

We've seen some of the airlines under pressure as well. And taking a look at some of the movers that we are seeing gaining today, T-Mobile. Actually, this is a non-coronavirus related stock, of course, but we have seen T-Mobile up today after that merger with Sprint closed earlier than expected. We're counting down to the closing bell.

See if we can go out to the New York Stock Exchange shortly to see what has become kind of a surreal scene over the last week, seeing that closing bell with nobody there at the exchange. Looking right now, we are seeing the Dow coming off of its lows just slightly down 996, and the NASDAQ down 337. Let's head out to the New York Stock Exchange for the closing bell.

All right, that was the closing bell there. Let's bring in our panel to talk about the market moves today. Andy, I want to bring you in first. You know, yesterday, we were talking about the worst quarter is now behind us. Here we are, the first day of the second quarter. It certainly doesn't look like we're off to any better start.

ANDY: Yeah, a couple thoughts, Akiko. And first of all, you know, I'm thinking about it maybe even more from a month to month perspective rather than a quarter to quarter. March was a crummy month, and the really scary thing is that by all signs, April's not going to be any better. And I mean that certainly from a health standpoint, and I think from an economic standpoint as well.

You know, you hear a lot about a hose of news. And today, it was just more like a tidal wave. And just reading the breaking news bar on our slack channel that Jared Blikre actually posts so much to, it was just one negative story after another from the car companies, construction spending, ISM, Home Depot, Wimbledon canceled, and on and on. And it's very hard to get optimistic. And I think that when we look back at the last week and the past couple sessions before that, where we had this little, I have to say, fool's gold rally. That I think that in retrospect maybe from weeks from now, we'll really be seeing that was just a bit of a blip.

- Hey, Andy. You know, I've been dusting off some of the bailout books on my bookshelf relating to 2008 and 2009. You know, September of 2008 was a dreadful month for stocks, and then October of 2008 was even worse. And then we had four months, and it got even worse. So I'm kind of using that as my template, and to my mind, there's still this sort of fading hope in the markets that there will be some kind of breakthrough here that saves us from this terrible mess we all think is coming.

And there's not going to be a breakthrough. I mean, yes, there might be some little antibody development in China or someplace else in the world. But it is going to take months to get this virus contained and to get to the point where we have enough testing. We're even talking about antibodies that might be available in the private sector, so this is a long haul. And markets seem like they don't want to believe it, but they're going to have to.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, Rick, to your point, no real light at the end of the tunnel at least on the medical side of things. We did get some economic data out today. The ADP private payroll numbers, 27,000 jobs lost. But really, that was up until March 12, so it doesn't really give us a good indication. The number, I think, a lot of investors are looking to is to tomorrow with the initial jobless claims numbers.

Last week, it was 3.2 million. The range this time around, I mean, we heard Diane Swonk say that she expects 10 million. It feels like things are kind of starting to settle in with the numbers that we're getting. But even that doesn't give us the full range of the period, where we start to see these stay at home measures, and then the coronavirus cases spike up.

- Right, it's going to be dreadful tomorrow. Today's ADP report doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what that number was. It just doesn't capture reality today. Neither will the governments jobs report that comes out on Friday.

These weekly figures give us a better idea, and they're going to be awful. And they're going to get worse, you know? What we're seeing now are all the people who work in restaurants and service industries for the businesses have just had to close. And they can't afford to keep those people on payroll for more than a week or two.

So those are what's rolling in now. And then what we're going to get after that probably is we're going to get layoffs from companies, where they tried to stay open for a week, or they tried telecommuting. And they just didn't work.

There's not enough revenue coming in, so you're right. Economists are kind of one upping themselves on the badness scale here. You know, you do hear estimates as low as perhaps five million new claims for uninsurance, but you're right. Then it goes way over 10 million by some estimates. We'll know tomorrow morning.

MYLES UDLAND: Well, and you know, Rick, to that point, I think we kind of are in this weird conundrum. Because you mentioned that the ADP number, I agree. That number doesn't really matter. Kind of throw it out. I think the official non-farm payrolls figure that we're going to get on Friday, kind of throw that one out too.

I mean, we forecast for 100,000 jobs lost. Clearly, not capturing the magnitude of what's happening out there. But obviously, over time, we're going to get more data. I do sort of wonder, if we're actually never going to get a proper sense of what the fallout from this really was.

Because if we start to see-- I mean, the loan process for restaurants and small businesses, it seems draconian. It seems like none of them will get support, but the reality is many of them will. And we have unemployment websites basically breaking, which means we can't capture the most acute phase of this crisis.

And maybe there's a chance in a month that some of the damage is stemmed, so this period we're in right now-- and I think April is going to be probably the worst month in US economic history. We might never get a full accounting for just how severe a lot of these measures work for workers who don't have the luxury, like we do, of working from home and kind of pretending like things are-- I wouldn't say normal, but that stuff is getting done.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, Myles.

- I think we're going to know how bad this is by the summer. And one might hope that by then, we actually might be at a point where we start to turn around a little bit. But the best stimulus here is a medical one. It's widespread testing and effort to allow us to actually slow the spread of this virus. Not stimulus money. The stimulus money will help, but businesses cannot reopen until this virus is contained. But maybe by summer, we'll have our arms around it.

AKIKO FUJITA: And Andy, if you can look at March as sort of the month where there was all this panic and uncertainty, it seems like April is kind of the month we look into, where things start to settle in. To Rick's point, all these projections that are out there from economists certainly still seems optimistic when you compare it to some of the stories we're hearing from those who are on the ground, those who are unemployed saying, I'm trying to file my claims. I can't get through the system. You know, small businesses we're saying, I'm still trying to navigate these loans when they start going out tomorrow. We don't know how quickly that stimulus is going to come either.

ANDY: Yeah, and I still think maybe just to echo a lot of points that you guys were making that the market is irrationally hopeful right now. And I just think there's a huge disconnect between the stock market and the incipient carnage in the real economy. And you see these stocks with P/Es over 20.

I mean, that's just-- I don't care. Like even if it's Home Depot, it's a high quality thing. Did you see about Home Depot today? They're reducing hours, so I don't think anyone is going to be immune. I mean, maybe some company that makes a, you know, a vaccine or something. But I still think there's more damage to be done here unfortunately.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, no question about that. I should also point out first day of the month, so a lot of rents due, mortgages due. We're certainly not learn more about those who can't meet those payments.