Market Bloodbath: Middle East Stocks Crater; Kuwait Halted; Aramco Below IPO; Dow Indicated Down 500 | Zero Hedge: "We see this panic-selling across the board taking certain markets to lows not seen even during the financial crisis."
In case a global viral pandemic wasn't enough of a concern, on Saturday Saudi Arabia launched a global oil price war, when Aramco announced unprecedented discounts on Brent shipments to clients around the globe, with Bloomberg later reporting that the OPEC nation was set to flood the world with excess production potentially to as much as a record 12 million barrels a day, which in a world where oil demand has cratered due to China's economy remaining paralyzed due to the pandemic, assures that when Brent reopens for trading tonight it will be in freefall, tumbling into the $30s if not lower as OPEC is no more and every producer now scrambles to undercut everyone else in price, unleashing another deflationary massacre and forcing central banks to pull another market-supporting rabbit out of their hat.
Until they do, however, traders in the Middle East where markets have already reopened, decided to sell first and ask questions later, as stocks cratered ahead of the first official oil price prints, which will come after what was already the biggest one day drop in Brent since 2008 on Friday after news that the OPEC+ alliance had fractured. And now oil will have a Saudi oil price war to deal with, prompting some to speculate that the price oil could drop into the high teens, if not lower.
