随着市场在冠状病毒旅游低迷期间开盘，油价暴跌20%

Brent crude, the international standard, lost NZ$13.84, or 19.3 per cent, to NZ$57.60, as of 12.23pm Monday NZST after earlier touching its lowest price since early 2016. Benchmark US crude fell NZ$12.81 to NZ$52.39.

国际标准布伦特原油(Brent crude)周一下跌13.84新西兰元，至57.60新西兰元，跌幅19.3%。此前，布伦特原油曾触及2016年初以来的最低价格。美国基准原油价格下跌12.81新西兰元，至52.39新西兰元。

The dramatic losses follow a 10.1 per cent drop for US oil on Saturday, which was its biggest loss in more than five years. Prices are falling as Saudi Arabia, Russia and other oil-producing countries argue how much to cut production in order to prop up prices.

美国石油上周六下跌10.1%，创下逾五年来最大跌幅，随后出现大幅下跌。随着油价下跌，沙特阿拉伯、俄罗斯和其他产油国争论减产多少才能提振油价。

Demand is falling as people cut back on travel around the world. The worry is that the new coronavirus will slow economies sharply, meaning even less demand.

随着人们减少环游世界的旅行，需求持续下降。令人担忧的是，新冠病毒将使经济急剧放缓，这意味着需求将进一步减少。

It's been a brutal and dizzying couple weeks for financial markets worldwide. The US stock market is down 12.2 per cent since setting its record last month on worries about how much corporate profits will fall because of Covid-19.

对全球金融市场来说，这是残酷而令人眩晕的两周。自上月创下纪录以来，美国股市已下跌12.2%，市场对有多少公司会因为Covid-19而利润下降表示恐慌。

The virus usually leaves people with only mild to moderate symptoms, but because it's new, experts can't say for sure how far it will ultimately spread and how much damage it will do, both to health and to the economy. The number of cases has reached 109,000 globally, and Italy today tried to quarantine a region holding more than a quarter of its population in hopes of corralling it.

这种病毒通常只会让人出现轻微到中度的症状，但由于它是新病毒，专家们无法确定它最终会传播到多远，以及它会对健康和经济造成多大的损害。全球感染病例已达10.9万例，意大利今天试图对一个占其人口四分之一以上的地区进行隔离，以期控制病毒。

If the number of new infections slows in other parts of the world as it has in China, if the US jobs market remains as solid as it's been and if all the unease in markets ends up creating just a short-term dip in confidence among shoppers, all this may recede quickly. But those are a lot of potential pain points.

如果世界其他地区的新感染人数像中国一样放缓，如果美国就业市场保持稳定，如果市场上所有的不安最终只是导致购物者的信心在短期内下降，那么所有这些都可能迅速消退。但这些都是很多潜在的痛点。