Geoffrey Smith 

Investing.com — As Covid-19 reached Beijing in China, risk assts all over the globe fell. This hit every local market hard and raised fears about stagflation. The world’s top producer, Indonesia, placed an export ban in place to prevent domestic oil prices from increasing. Palm oil saw a 7.7% rise. U.S. stock losses are expected to continue on Friday, and Twitter (NYSE 🙂 was not affected by Elon Musk’s meeting with its board at the weekend. Emmanuel Macron easily defeated Marine Le Pen, a far-right candidate to the presidency of France. German confidence in business continues its steady decline. What you need to know on financial markets Monday, April 25th.

1. China panic buys in Beijing, which causes panic buying everywhere else

Chinese assets plunged, driving down European stocks as well as global oil prices and metals markets.

Newswires reported panic buying of foodstuffs and other essentials as the city’s 21 million inhabitants braced for a lockdown similar to that which has roiled Shanghai and other major centers in recent weeks.

The index fell over 6% and the 3.7%, while futures fell over 10% as traders fretted about the possible closure of the region’s steel mills. The lost nearly 1% to its lowest in just under two years, having also come under pressure from a separate direction: the People’s Bank of China has reportedly authorized banks to loosen lending conditions to a raft of troubled developers, whose mountain of unsold properties has grown as Covid lockdowns have gummed up the housing market still further.

2. Musk is now being rebuffed by Twitter boards

According to several reports, Twitter’s board has begun discussions with Tesla (NASDAQ) CEO Elon Muss about the possibility of a sale. If confirmed, that would represent an abrupt reversal by the social media company after it adopted a poison-pill defense to block Musk’s unwelcome $43 billion bid.

Musk had last week announced that he had secured funding for his bid, making it harder for Twitter’s board to dismiss it out of hand. The Wall Street Journal, among others, reported that they had met on Sunday. They were progressing although few details were available.

Twitter (NYSE:) stock rose 1.2% in premarket trading but was still nearly 9% below Musk’s offer price of $54.20, which he has said is his “best and final” proposal. It is still uncertain that Musk’s bid will succeed, so the discount was taken.

3. Stocks will open lower after Philips earnings miss. Coke earnings being eyed

U.S. stocks could open later sharply lower, after China’s weekend news confirmed that market remains in pessimistic mode.

At 6:10 am ET (1010 GMT), the indexes were 0.8% down and 265 points were lost. On Friday, all three benchmark cash indices fell between 2.5% and 2.8%, which was the biggest and longest one-day decline this year. The reason for the selloff is fear of Federal Reserve aggressive interest rate rises to restrain inflation.

Coca-Cola, (NYSE:), and Activision Blizzard are likely to be on the stock market later. Their quarterly results will also be due. Dutch-based medical tech group Philips suffered a 11% plunge to its lowest level in six years, as it warned that Roche (SIX) was closing down after its core quarter profit dropped by one third. Roche’s stock also dropped after it warned of a slower pace in Covid kit sales. Nissan (OTC-:) ADRs also will be in the spotlight following reports. Renault (EPA:) could sell a portion of its stake to fund its investments.

4. Re-election of Macron possible thanks to retirements. Ifo Index stabilizes

Emmanuel Macron, the French president who won re-election for the first time in over two decades easily beat Marine Le Pen (59%-41%) in a run-off that took place on Sunday.

The margin was wider than had seemed likely two weeks ago after the first round of voting and gave a modest degree of support to the euro and Eurozone government bonds – albeit that was lost in the more negative news coming out of the U.S. and China.

Le Pen’s performance still represents a sharp improvement on the same run-off five years ago, which she lost by a margin of 66%-34%.  Notably, she was able to win in all age groups below 60.

The Ifo Business Climate index shows that German business confidence stabilized in April at a low point elsewhere in Europe. The survey was stronger than expected, but Ifo still warned of fresh supply chain pressures down the line due to China’s Covid issues and the war in Ukraine.

5. China fear fears fuel oil slump; Dallas Fed to survey; Oil prices plummet in Palm oil booms

The prospect of Beijing lockdowns making it harder for Chinese to purchase crude oil caused crude oil prices to fall sharply. Bloomberg had reported on Friday that China’s demand was already running at an average 1.2 million barrels a day less than March due to the restrictions in Shanghai – which remain largely in place more than three weeks since their introduction.

At 6:20 AM ET futures had fallen 4.1% to $97.88/barrel, and 3.9% to $102.02/barrel

Prices got a modicum of support from reports of a major fire on Russia’s largest Europe-facing oil export pipeline, after a major fire at some of its fuel storage tanks near the Ukrainian border.

The Dallas Federal Reserve’s may shed light later on the outlook for U.S. output after a full month of prices staying above $100. Other commodities also continue to show signs of tension, with in Kuala Lumpur rising 7% in response to the decision on Friday by Indonesia (by far the world’s largest exporter) to ban exports in an effort to keep domestic prices low. Chicago saw soybean oil rise as high as 1.9% to close to all-time highs.