US markets closed on Good Friday

US markets were closed Friday in observance of Good Friday. Trading will resume Monday.

Stocks closed Thursday on a positive note.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 285.80 points, or 1.22 percent and closed at 23,719.37 – a gain of 13 percent for the week. The S&P 500 rose 39.84 points, or 1.44 percent, to 2,789.82, a gain of 12 percent for the week. The Nasdaq Composite climbed 62.67 points, or 0.77 percent, to 8,153.58 and advanced 11 percent for the week.

In part, stocks – a bet on future growth – have bounced back because the Federal Reserve has provided unprecedented support for the economy. On Thursday, the nation's central bank said it would provide $2.3 trillion in lending as it expanded efforts to held small and midsize enterprises as well as cities and states. The Fed also said it would expand corporate lending programs.

But there are likely to be tough times ahead.

Economists at JP Morgan now believe the US economy will shrink by 40 percent in the second quarter, driving the unemployment rate as high as 20 percent with 25 million jobs lost.

A total of 16.8 million people have filed for unemployment benefits in the last three weeks, the Labor Department reported.

Earlier, the economists foresaw a 25 percent drop in the Gross Domestic Product, the value of all goods and services produced in a year.

But they expect growth will rebound by 23 percent in the third quarter and 13 percent in the fourth. The forecasts are not final and will be revised. The economists warned: ``Over the last few weeks, forecasters have been operating in a fog. Economic models that have been trained on post-war data face obvious limitations. In their place, we have reverted to different ways to address the outlook."

Initially, the JP Morgan researchers said they gauged the impact of the shutdown on demand and considered the drop in spending that would follow as social distancing expanded and lengthened in duration. Later, the economists factored in supply-side demand as more states imposed stay-at-home orders that limited production.