ASSOCIATED PRESS A woman walks past a bank electronic board showing the Hong Kong share index at Hong Kong Stock Exchange Thurs. Jan. 30, 2020.

MONTREAL ― Has the bar for what will rally a stock market fallen far too low? It used to be that a surge to record prices required some significant good news on the economic front: A run of really good earnings reports from corporations, or employment numbers showing a whole bunch of people just got hired. But now it seems all we need for a jump to record-breaking stock prices is the news that, in all likelihood, we aren’t all going to die very soon. Watch: Coronavirus infects Canadians on board quarantined cruise ship. Story continues below.

With a World Health Organization official announcing that the newly-named COVID-19 virus outbreak could be over by April, Toronto’s S&P TSX stock index hit 17,777.11, an all-time high, on Tuesday. The U.S.’s three core stock market indices ― the Dow Jones, the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ ― all touched record highs Tuesday as well. This was all neatly captured in a chart from Bank of Montreal senior economist Robert Kavcic, plotting the value of the S&P 500 against new daily reports of COVID-19 cases. As the number of cases peaked and fell, stock prices bottomed and started bouncing back.

BMO Economics