| The global death toll from the pandemic surpasses half a million people. Shale-gas giant Chesapeake Energy files for bankruptcy. And U.S. companies want more China faster. Here are some of the things people in markets are talking about today. Coronavirus deaths surpassed 500,000 worldwide and confirmed cases rose to more than 10 million, according to Johns Hopkins University data. U.S. and U.K. public health experts cautioned against lifting lockdowns too quickly and South Africa warned of a spike in its economic hub. Florida, one of the U.S. states reinstating measures to halt the spread, reported a 6.4% increase in infections while California's infection rate slowed. U.S. cases rose 1.7% overall. Cases in Tokyo rose by 60 on Sunday, a daily record after Japan lifted a state of emergency last month. Israel is seeking to tighten restrictions on gatherings as cases soar following reopenings. In Australia, the state of Victoria will enforce mandatory coronavirus testing for returning travelers and could put some suburbs back into lockdown. Here is how Bloomberg is tracking the virus. Asian stocks were poised to slip at the start of the trading week as investors weighed a record daily pace of coronavirus infection increases in the U.S. against signs the Chinese economy is continuing to recover from its shutdown. The yen edged up. Early moves in currency markets Monday were muted, with the Australian dollar modestly lower. S&P 500 Index futures slid at the open after global equities fell last week, with stock futures in Japan and Australia pointing lower. Oil declined. Chinese markets reopen after a two-day holiday. Chesapeake Energy, the archetype for America's extraordinary shale-gas fortunes, filed for bankruptcy, becoming one of the biggest victims of a spectacular collapse in energy demand from the virus-induced global lockdown. The Oklahoma City-based company filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of Texas. The company also entered into an agreement to eliminate about $7 billion in debt and secure $925 million in debtor-in-possession financing, said Sunday in a statement. Chesapeake — which was a $37.5 billion giant about a decade ago — is partly a victim of its own success in extracting gas from shale basins, which contributed to a global glut and weighed on prices. Even before the coronavirus, the company had struggled for years with a heavy debt load accumulated during an earlier period of aggressive expansion. A growing list of Facebook's advertisers is set to halt spending on social media, undermining the company's sales outlook and putting its stock price under further pressure. Starbucks, Levi Strauss, PepsiCo and Diageo were among the most recent companies to say they're curtailing ad spending, part of an exodus aimed at pushing Facebook and its peers to suppress posts that glorify violence, divide and disinform the public, and promote racism and discrimination. Facebook generated $17.7 billion in revenue last quarter alone. Just as the U.S. president urges American companies to ditch China, many of them can't get more of China fast enough. Consider the voyage of the container ship Melina, which set sail Wednesday from a Chinese port near Shenzhen with products bound for U.S. households, a hulking symbol of how the flow of goods is adapting in a global economy crippled by a pandemic. Capable of carrying almost 4,300 containers — in an industry where the biggest can handle more than 20,000 — the Melina is part of a budding fleet of smaller vessels that Covid-19 has thrust into service between the world's biggest economies. Smaller means faster. The vessel will dock in Los Angeles on July 6 after a 12-day nonstop journey — a week ahead of a larger ship doing the same route. With the extra speed comes a price that's as much as double the cost of standard transpacific service. But for now, shipping demand from some companies remains brisk, justifying the added import cost of fast delivery to meet the burst of online shopping. What We've Been Reading This is what's caught our eye over the past 24 hours: And finally, here's what Tracy's interested in this morning We're used to generational warfare in the context of the wider economy. Baby Boomers are said to have benefited from things like generous pensions, runaway house prices, and years of favorable government policies that were denied to younger generations who've also had to struggle with stagnant wages and student debt loads. Now we might have a case of generational tension when it comes to investing too. One of the recent mysteries of the U.S. stock market has been the seeming contradiction between hefty outflows from U.S. equity funds and what looks like pretty strong interest in stock-buying from individual retail investors. You can see that interest in NYSE margin accounts, or the sheer volume of publicity around trading platforms like Robinhood, forums such as r/WallStreetBets, or day traders.  Analysts at JPMorgan Chase say that age may have something to do with the split. In a note published late last week, they argue that older investors are more likely to invest their money via equity funds, while younger investors are more likely to bet on individual stocks. In other words, "the weaker flow picture in equity funds suggests that the older generation of U.S. retail investors has been so far more cautious on equities than the new generation as they have preferred to deploy their excess liquidity to bond funds to perhaps take advantage of the value that still exists in credit. Instead Millennials have been more bullish on equities, preferring to deploy their excess liquidity into individual equities via retail brokers such as Robinhood rather than via equity funds." There's now a Japanese edition of Five Things. 世界のビジネスニュースを毎朝メールでお届けします。ニュースレターへの登録はこちら。 | 
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