Global markets are mixed Thursday, with Asia beginning the day sustaining serious losses due more pandemic-imposed gloom.   The S&P/ASX in Sydney had the biggest losses in the region, plunging 2.5%, and  Japan’s Nikkei index lost 1.2% for the day.  Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped 0.5%, while Shanghai’s Composite gained 0.3%.   Seoul’s KOSPI index lost 2.2%, but Taiwan’s TSEC index rose 0.4%.  The Sensex in Mumbai was fluctuating in late afternoon trading.   The situation was much better in Europe, with the FTSE index in London up 0.2%, Paris’s CAC-40 0.4% higher, and Frankfurt’s DAX index up one percent. Oil markets are falling Thursday.  U.S. crude oil is selling at $37.79 per barrel, down 0.5%, and Brent crude trading at $40.20 per barrel, down 0.2%.The mixed situation is due to more bad news about COVID-19 from the United States, which posted more than 36,000 new coronavirus cases Wednesday, the highest one-day number of new cases since late April.  Most of the numbers came out of Florida and Texas, both of which posted over 5,000 new cases, and California, which posted a staggering 7,000 total new cases — a record day for all three populous states.  The news led to all three major U.S. indexes posting losses of well over 2%.   And Wall Street is likely to get off to a bad start Thursday, with the Dow Jones, S&P 500 and NASDAQ all trending downward in futures trading.     
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