"On March 9, 2020 – on black Monday, the US oligarchs destroyed the markets."
The claim was made in an article published on sputnik.az entitled “When will the United States burn Donbas?”
Fakt Yoxla examined whether the claim was true.
First of all, it is unclear exactly who the author meant by "US oligarchs" in the article. Because oligarchs can only exist in oligarchic systems.
The United States is a democratically governed state, and there is no known oligarchic system in this country. In this regard, the author's statement "US oligarchs" is inadequate and incorrect. Therefore, we will investigate the above claim, considering that the author associates the American business elite with the name "US oligarchs".
On March 9, 2020, there was a major collapse in global stock markets. That day, which went down in history as the next "black Monday", most of the world's leading stock exchanges fell sharply. So, on March 9, 2020, the main indexes of the US stock market took a major hit: the Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 2,013.76 points, or 7.79%, from the previous trading day’s close; the S&P 500 fell 225.81 points, or 7.6%; and the Nasdaq composite fell 624.94 points, or 7.29%.
On the same day, London’s FTSE 100 sank 7.7%; France’s CAC 40 lost 8.4%; Japan's Nikkei 225 slid 5.1%; Australia's S&P/ASX 200 shed 7.3%; Hong Kong's Hang Seng index lost 4.2%.
The downturn lasted all week, and early next week, the great depression of March 16 went down in history as the "new black Monday" for stock markets.
From the beginning of 2020, the coronavirus pandemic began to spread rapidly around the world. The economic downturn caused by the coronavirus has reduced global demand for oil. For this reason, the OPEC countries agreed in Vienna on March 5 to reduce production to prevent a fall in prices. However, later OPEC and Russia failed to reach a consensus on reducing production.
After that, Saudi Arabia announced that it could increase oil production from April 2020 to 10 million barrels per day and, if necessary, to 12 million barrels per day.
Furthermore, Saudi Arabia said it would sell oil to consumers at a $ 6-8 lower per barrel from next month. Against this background, oil prices fell by more than 30%.
This huge drop in the oil market led to the collapse of the abovementioned global stock markets on March 9. Of course, in addition to the indirect impact of the coronavirus on the oil market, the uncertainty and panic created by investors were also one of the main factors in this collapse.
On March 9, 2020, the VIX index, which measures the level of fear in the markets, increased to 62.12. This was the highest level of the VIX index since the 2008 financial crisis.
As can be seen, the collapse of global stock markets on March 9, 2020, occurred spontaneously, without the influence of any interest groups. There is no evidence that this collapse was caused by wealthy American businessmen.
Fakt Yoxla concludes that sputnik.az's claim is Anti-Western Propaganda.
