Updated March 17, 2020 15:42:55

Photo: The ASX is recording early gains despite overnight falls on Wall Street. (Reuters: Daniel Munoz)

The local share market has unexpectedly surged, attempting to rebound from Monday's panic sell-off, which was its worst day since the 1987 Black Monday crash.

By 3:10pm AEDT, the All Ords index was up 3 per cent to 5,210 points, while the ASX 200 was up 3.4 per cent.

Shortly after midday, the indices had been up more than 4 per cent as US stock futures predicted a strong rebound on Wall Street tomorrow.

Overnight, Wall Street experienced a bout of panic selling, with the Dow Jones index dropping 13 per cent, its biggest fall in three decades.

"This is 2008, but with a completely different focus," said Axicorp market strategist Stephen Innes, referring to the global financial crisis.

"This isn't a banking crisis, it's a global economic crisis where virtually every global industry will be facing extreme pressure without a public bailout."

Groceries and gold in the lead

The best performing stock was Metcash (+21.2pc), the company which owns the IGA grocery stores and Mitre 10 hardware stores.

This was after investment bank UBS, in an investment note, upgraded its rating to "buy" from "neutral".

"We believe COVID-19 will embed new behaviours in consumers, potentially leading to an acceleration in the rate of online penetration (both grocery & fast food) and is likely to see a return to cooking at home, at least in the near term," the bank said in its research.

Interest rates, trade tensions and the recent bushfires are other factors contributing to the fall of the Australian dollar.

UBS also upgraded its rating for Coles (neutral) and Woolworths (buy), which led to their share price jumping 6.4 and 4.4 per cent respectively.

Many of today's best performers are gold stocks including Northern Star Resources, Gold Road Resources and Silver Lake Resources, which have rocketed by more than 15 per cent each.

This was despite a fall in the precious metal's spot price, down 0.8 per cent to $US1,501.56 an ounce.

However, the big four banks, ranging from NAB (+6.4pc) to Commonwealth Bank (+10.6pc), are providing the largest boost to the index.

Mining giants are also pushing the local bourse higher with BHP jumping 11 per cent, while Rio Tinto and Fortescue Metals are up more than 6 per cent.

COVID-19 corporate victims

The travel industry has been hardest hit by the coronavirus outbreak, with shares in Qantas down another 4.3 per cent, bringing its total losses to 59 per cent since the year began.

This was after the airline said it would cut international capacity by 90 per cent, and domestic capacity by 60 per cent, until at least the end of May.

Coronavirus looks set to cause deep global economic disruption, and those companies that have binged on cheap debt are the ones least likely to survive the crisis, writes Ian Verrender.

Webjet shares fell by another 1.6 per cent after the Government introduced tougher restrictions, requiring everyone who enters Australia to undergo a two-week self-isolation period.

Since January, the online travel booking company's share price has plummeted by 67 per cent.

Commercial real estate is also feeling the impact of the outbreak, particularly Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, which saw its share price sink 27 per cent.

The COVID-19 crisis has led to European governments forcing the "non-essential" stores within its shopping centres to close in France, Spain, Poland, Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, the company said in a statement to the ASX.

The announcement does not apply to Westfield malls in Australia.

Despite its shopping centres being "substantially closed", its supermarket, food store and pharmacy tenants are still typically allowed to open, the company said in a statement.

The Australian dollar was higher at 61.3 US cents.

Topics: stockmarket, markets, infectious-diseases-other, business-economics-and-finance, australia

First posted March 17, 2020 10:22:03