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1. Spot Gold has traded between $1,709 and $1,742 so far today…as of 7:00 am Pacific the yellow metal is up $23 an ounce at $1,737…Gold pushed to fresh daily highs after the release of new weekly jobless claims followed by very weak preliminary U.S. manufacturing and service sector sentiment data…meanwhile, sales of new U.S. single-family homes dropped by the most in more than 6.5 years in March and further declines are likely as the Wuhan COVID-19 pandemic batters the economy and throws millions of Americans out of work…global ETFs have now accumulated Gold for 23 business days in a row…Silver has jumped 21 cents to $15.29…inflows into Silver-backed ETFs have totalled 714 metric tons so far in April, a rise of 3.5%, according to Bloomberg data…since the beginning of the year, inflows into Silver ETFs are 2,021 tons (+10.7%), which corresponds to just under a month of global Silver mine production, Commerzbank says…“Holdings are thus at a record high of almost 21,000 tons. For the whole of last year, inflows amounted to a good 2,570 tons, which was itself a high figure (the largest inflows in 10 years). ETF buying interest has thus risen sharply again this year”…Copper and Nickel are up slightly at $2.31 and $5.44, respectively, while Zinc is off a penny at 84 cents…June WTI futures have rebounded $3.13 a barrel to $16.91 while the U.S. Dollar Index is up slightly at 100.44…manufacturing and services activity in the UK has contracted at a rate “vastly exceeding that seen even during the global financial crisis” as a large portion of the economy has been shut down due to the pandemic…a series of closely watched surveys, also released today, illustrated the severity of the crash in activity across Europe, as lockdowns stifle businesses…French and German business activity fell to record lows, in readings that suggest the region faces a severe economic downturn…

2. Millions of Americans sought unemployment benefits last week in a continuation of a historic labor-market decline triggered by the pandemic and lockdown measures…4.4 million Americans applied for jobless benefits in the week ended April 18, the Labor Department reported this morning…jobless claims, which are laid-off workers’ applications for unemployment-insurance payments, had reached 5.2 million a week earlier…since the pandemic led to widespread shutdowns in mid-March, workers have filed more than 26 million unemployment insurance claims, wiping out all the job gains since the Great Recession…some economists say unemployment claims likely peaked in late March when they reached nearly 7 million…most states recorded a declining number of new claimants last week…however, a fresh surge of claims in future weeks in possible as workers who were previously unable to file because of backlogged state systems are counted, and as states begin to accept applications from people who are newly eligible under a $2 trillion stimulus package, such as independent contractors and self-employed individuals…

3. After donating $20 million in March, China is giving another $30 million to the World Health Organization (WHO) in what essentially amounts to a “payoff” by the CCP…while the Trudeau government remains silent about the behaviour of China and the WHO, Australia’s Prime Minister announced today that the country says it will push for an international investigation into the WHO’s response to the pandemic at next month’s annual meeting of the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization…the Trump administration has already declared that it intends to cancel all U.S. funding of the WHO…Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe says the province has successfully flattened the curve of COVID-19 infections and will outline a plan today to gradually reopen some sectors of the economy beginning next month…Moe used a televised address last night to caution that the process will be slow and methodical…“Over the next several weeks, we will gradually be turning up the light once again on Saskatchewan’s economy”…previously a poster child for its efficient handling of the pandemic, Singapore is now back in the spotlight as it struggles to contain a new outbreak among a section of its population – migrant workers…the number of Wuhan COVID-19 cases in the city-state has spiked in the past few weeks, from about 1,000 cumulative cases on April 1 to more than 10,000 today…most of the newly infected patients are foreign migrant workers residing in crowded dormitories, who hail from countries including India and Bangladesh…Indonesia continues to see an acceleration of COVID-19 cases and is tightening up measures to prevent further spread…

4. U.S. meat supply tightens: Tyson Foods (TSN, NYSE) is shuttering 2 pork processing plants, including its largest in the United States, after employees tested positive for COVID-19, further tightening meat supplies after other major slaughterhouse shutdowns…the closures are limiting the amount of meat the U.S. can produce during the outbreak and adding stress on farmers who are losing markets for their pigs…lockdowns that aim to stop the spread of the virus have also prevented farmers around the globe from delivering food products to consumers…millions of laborers cannot get to fields for harvesting and planting, and there are too few truckers to keep goods moving…Tyson Foods, the largest U.S. meat supplier, said it will indefinitely suspend operations at its largest pork plant in Waterloo, Iowa, after operating at reduced capacity…meanwhile, a Cargill plant in High River, Alberta, that produces nearly 40% of Canada’s beef was shut down this week after being linked to more than 450 COVID-19 cases and 1 death…

6. Sign of the times: Target (TGT, NYSE) has seen a sharp increase in online sales, as shoppers try to limit time inside stores or avoid the trips altogether during the pandemic…since its fiscal 1st quarter began February 2, Target’s same-store sales have risen more than 7%…the gain, which compares with an increase of 1.5% in the fiscal 4th quarter, is the result of a doubling of its online sales, partially offset by declines inside its nearly 1,900 brick-and-mortar stores…in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box”, Target CEO Brian Cornell said the company is trying to figure out if customers’ new shopping patterns are here to stay…“We are spending a lot of time trying to understand how the pandemic is going to change the future of how American consumers shop, how they live, how they work, the things that they value,” he said…“But it’s been really hard to predict week by week”…

7. Sweden’s success in tackling Wuhan COVID-19 with no lockdown: Its neighbors closed borders, schools, bars and businesses as the pandemic swept through Europe, but Sweden went against the grain by keeping public life as unrestricted as possible…the strategy – aimed at allowing some exposure to the virus in order to build immunity among the general population while protecting high-risk groups like the elderly – has been controversial…however, the country’s chief epidemiologist said the strategy appears to be working and that “herd immunity” could be reached in the capital Stockholm in a matter of weeks…“In major parts of Sweden, around Stockholm, we have reached a plateau (in new cases) and we’re already seeing the effect of herd immunity and in a few weeks’ time we’ll see even more of the effects of that. And in the rest of the country, the situation is stable,” Dr. Anders Tegnell, chief epidemiologist at Sweden’s Public Health Agency, told CNBC…herd immunity among a population, usually achieved through vaccination, is reached when around 60% of citizens are deemed immune…without a vaccine for the coronavirus, however, scientists are looking at whether exposure to and recovery from COVID-19 leads to long-term immunity…reinfections of coronavirus have been reported…Tegnell said sampling and modeling data indicated that 20% of Stockholm’s population is already immune to the virus, and that “in a few weeks’ time we might reach herd immunity and we believe that is why we’re seeing a slow decline in cases, in spite of sampling (testing for the coronavirus) more and more. Unfortunately the mortality rate is high due to the introduction (of the virus) in elderly care homes and we are investigating the cause of that,” he said…the major part of Sweden’s 15,322 confirmed cases are in Stockholm and its surrounding areas, with very small incidences of the virus in the rest of Sweden – a country of around 10 million that has a low population density outside its urban hubs…the number of cases in Sweden is almost double that in neighboring Denmark (it has 8,108 cases and has reported 370 deaths) and Finland (with just over 4,000 cases and 141 deaths) that imposed strict lockdown measures…since their populations are each about 5 million – half of Sweden’s – the rates are about the same, although the comparison could be skewed by testing numbers in each country…

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