Traders said that they knew things would be bad when they saw the extent of the oil price declines overnight.

So when the markets opened here, there was only really one way things could go.

What was most surprising, though, was the extent off the declines, which triggered a CZ you mentioned there, John.

What's known as these circuit breakers, the automatically kick in and shut the market down.

That is a very, very rare event here on Wall Street.

The idea is that it gives investors a chance to stop and try and take a breath.

But when the markets reopened, the screens immediately went green then, as they are now still behind me.

As you can see, what's perhaps most worrying Jon is that investors really have been pricing in a global economic slowdown now for weeks because of this spreading Corona virus.

What traders are now saying, though, is that the market is pricing in a full blown recession.

The New York Stock Exchange.

It is an historic day of trade here, and uncertainty is wreaking.

Looking at declines across the board here in this market, there's no other way to say it.

They're calling it black.

Monday, traders in New York braced for the worst, and within seconds it came Theo.

At the open, shares plummeted to levels so low it triggered the stock exchange to automatically shut down This morning.

There was definitely some panic in the air started last night when you started to see the futures trading down and everyone was worried about where the markets were going.

This morning there was panic coming through the phones on the floor, traders just trying to rush to get to the point of sale to get rid of their stock.

This was definitely in the oil markets where I think people started a fear, Ah, global recession.

So you have a market that's falling out of control.

You have oil markets that are falling out of control and you have no idea what the backdrop of a virus globally, where all the chips are going to lie when it's all said and done.

The latest panic came as investors here and around the world reacted to a crash in the oil markets on the on word spread of the Corona virus unchecked around the globe.

As the market reopened after a 15 minute pause, Wall Street's leading share index, the S and P 500 tumbled more than 6%.

Markets were already spooked by the virus and its impact on the global economy, but adding to their fears and escalating spat between Russia and Saudi Arabia over oil prices itself in response to a drastic fall in demand in the wake of the Corona virus at a meeting of the major oil producers last week, the plan was to cut production to stabilize the market.

But last night, Russia refused and instead ramped up production and slashed prices.

Not to be outdone, Saudi Arabia quickly followed, oil prices tumbled.

That stunned the stock markets, and the rest is red ink on the screens.

The U.

S stock market followed a pattern set across the world.

The footsie in London, the DAX in Germany and the nick A in Japan, all tanking trillions wiped off the values of stocks in drops not seen on most of the world's markets since the financial crisis of 2000 and eight investors.

I think of frightened offer another big crisis.

This is the first time that the global economy and the global markets are being tested.

Since 2000 and eight, there's a really big moves on dhe.

Clearly, the implications are dramatic.

The worry is, the usual tools are having little effect.

The dramatic cut in U.

S.

Interest rates last week failing toe have its desired impact.

As parts of northern Italy went into lock down in the U.

S.

Similar action may be needed here.

President Trump, who visited the Center for Disease Control on Friday, stuck to his line that the markets were simply reacting to a dose of fake news and that life on the economy go on.

What President Trump is you saw.

They're going out of his way to try and pump up the stock market and play down the threat off the Corona viruses.

Even saying that the oil price declines are a good thing for consumers.

Of course, they're not good for US oil producers, and he's reminding us of the numbers of people that die from the ordinary flu every year.

And of course there is.

You start pointing the finger at journalists who he says, are responsible for hyping this story and causing the markets to tank in an election year, we know he's going to do everything he can to try and keep the economy strong traded here.

I should say they are not blaming journalists.

They are talking to a very real fear that all of this could lead to a global recession.

They are hoping that the White House today will step in and say something to try and calm things down.

We know that the vice president, Mike Pence, is due to hold a press conference to update everybody in a couple of hours time.

What the traders and others are looking for is some sort of reassurance that they will offer paid leave for families who are being forced to take time off, or maybe even step up and prop up ailing industries like the airline and the travel sectors, which are being hit particularly hard.

You can see from the screens behind me there that most of those stocks are very much in the red.

The problem is that whatever financial assistance they provide, all of that is welcome.

But what trade is really want to see here is the development of a vaccine.

But as we know, as we've said many times before that that is at least six months to a year.

If no further away.

Matchable Thanks very much indeed about Katie Martin is the markets editor of The Financial Times.

She's with me again now, Katie.

The last time we spoke, it looked bad.

But this looks a lot worse now.

Why is that?

What?

The underlying reasons why this is so much more serious?

Well, a cz you, as you say, the market's been in trouble for a couple of weeks.

Based on the Corona virus, people have been starting to price in the risk that maybe we're going to get tipped into a global recession by the shutdown that's happened in manufacturing and travel around the world because of this virus.

Then the OPEC thing comes along on.

One investor that we spoke to this morning described it as throwing a grenade into a bloodbath.

So this is great if you like mixed metaphors, I suppose.

But what it means is that you're adding an extremely uncertain situation into an extremely uncertain situation, and the impact on markets has been pretty horrible today.

Now the Saudis have done this before, you know, to lower the old price, flood the market with cheap oil, hoping the demand would pick up and they end up with a bigger market share.

That calculation may not work this time.

Yes, So if you want to look on the bright side, you could say, Look, we've had a 30% drop in oil first thing this morning it was about 20% down.

Both left just staggering, staggering.

And this is a huge gift to consumers of oil the world over.

If you want to look at it that way, you could say, Look, this is a great stimulus into the global economy.

We're not driving anywhere all flying anywhere, though.

That's the thing.

And it's a bit like the help that central Banks have been trying to throw into the system.

The Federal Reserve in the U.

S.

Cut interest rates last week, which we weren't expecting again.

It's difficult for that to help if there isn't the demand there for travel and general economic activity.

So the fact that the Saudis and the Russians have been playing this war this game over oil does that make the recession that much worse.

Well, what people are worrying about in markets is we've seen stock markets dropped very heavily, as your report was just saying.

We've also seen stress in the high your bond market in the States, and there's lots of quite small energy companies in the U.

S.

Shale oil producers.

This is exactly who Russia is going after on dhe, they borrowed lots of money for their exploration and all the rest of it.

They're gonna find that debt very difficult to pay back with oil trading at these sorts of levels.

And that's a worry about the domino effect of what could happen through corporate America.

Because the big problem, as far as I can understand, is a corporate debt.

You know, the amount of money the companies have borrowed has gone from three trillion in 2007 to 6 trillion out huge mountain of debt.

If they can't pay that service that debt, what happens to the economy?

Well, people have been warning for months that the U.

S high yield debt market isn't is an accident waiting to happen that there's loads of companies out there that massively loaded up on debt while it's being cheap, and it would only take a little trigger to push him over the edge.

This is the trigger, so that market was particularly fierce again today.

So to be absolutely clear, we are heading for a global recession.

Yes, on them.

That's not fair.

You know everything.

Give us.

Give us your best hunter.

The market certainly thinks so.

If you look at the U.

S.

Government bond markets, that's definitely what the what people are pricing in there on the kind of Ford's that we saw today.

Is that a slump or a crash?

It's definitely crashed territory.

The oil price move was the worst since the first Gulf War in 1991.

This has not been a normal day in the office, and even by the standards of the past couple of weeks, which have taken a few years off my life, frankly, it's been pretty tough.

And as we heard from Sean, there's only so much of central banks conduce fix this.

Explain that briefly.

That's the big concern.

Central banks have cut interest rates absolutely to the floor since the great financial crisis of 2008.

There really isn't very much room to cut him further.

So if anyone's expecting them to come in as the cavalry, that's a difficult calculation that could beam or coordination between.

That might help, but it's not easy.

Kati Marton.

Thank you very much indeed.

Jump.

So now here, Boris Johnson says the U.

K is making extensive preparations to move into the delay phase of the plan to contain the spread of the Corona virus, trying to push the peak number of cases into the summer when the N.

H S is better able to cope.

Speaking alongside the prime minister, the government's chief medical advisor warned that soon cases of the virus would spread really quite fast.

Quote have which point anyone with even a minor fever may have to self isolate afterwards.

For seven days, 1/5 death from the virus was confirmed in the last hour.

Health and social care correspondent Victoria McDonald has this report from a school in rugby toe a worker, a transport for London to two people in Wolverhampton.

New cases of covered 19 confirmed today and then this afternoon the death was announced of a patient at the Royal Wolverhampton Hospital and another at Epsom in ST Helio University Hospital's Trust, both in their seventies, both with underlying conditions.

A statement made to emphasize that although highly contagious, the risk of death from covered 19 is far higher in older people with other serious health problems.

Today, the emergency Cobra committee met and confirmed that the country remains in the containment phase.

But the chief medical officer issued a stark warning.

We're now very close to the time, probably within the next 10 to 14 days when the modeling would imply we should move to a situation where we say everybody who has even minor respiratory tract infections or a fever that should be self isolating for seven days afterwards and this is going to be the next step.

We have not yet reached that step, but we are going to be reaching that step in the really quite near future.

But in the meantime, the N HS will be doing this At the moment we're screening everybody.

He's in intensive care for Corona virus if they have symptoms that are compatible with Corona virus, so if they have a very bad pneumonia on will be extending that out Now, as from tomorrow to everybody has a significant enough pneumonia or other respiratory tract infection to get into hospital at all.

A blurring of the already fine line between preparing and scaring With this warning from the prime minister watching what is happening around the world are scientists think containment is extremely unlikely to work on its own.

And that is why we're making extensive preparations for a move to the delay phase.

Were preparing various actions to slow the spread of this disease in order to reduce the strain it places on the N.

H s.

The four phases as we're coming to know well, our contain delay, research and mitigate.

So the concern, I think that all of us have is really essentially what our Italian colleagues have found in terms off large numbers of patients who need access to medical care.

Clearly, the N H.

S is gearing up and there are lots of plans going on and we, as general practice a gearing up for that.

But we only have a limited capacity and obviously we are concerned also to make sure our staff stay well because obviously we'd potentially could become a patient ourselves.

Delay could mean more home working or as a last resort, closing schools, canceling large public events.

Indeed, in Dublin, where they've had 21 cases, they have already taken the decision to cancel the ST Patrick's Day parade.

BARDEN, England.

For horse racing fans, the bets are still on for the Cheltenham Festival.

Speculation about canceling off this boning sporting events is very premature.

We're nowhere near that sort of stage.

Andi, if we were to do so, I just add the cabin.

There is a possibility it could happen, but we're very clear at the moment that that