View of the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
(Photo: dpa)
Frankfurt, New York On the US stock exchanges, the opening goes down. The S&P 500 index fell more than 1.5 percent, while the Dow Jones and Russell 2000 small cap indexes each fell more than two percent.
In particular, travel and leisure stocks are slipping significantly, while the so-called “stay-at-home” stocks are gaining ground. As a result, the Nasdaq100 index is only down by one percent.
The reason for the price loss is the new coronavirus variant discovered in South Africa. There is a risk that this could undo the fragile economic recovery. Allegedly the World Health Organization and scientists in South Africa are working “at full speed” to find out how quickly variant B.1.1.529 can spread and whether it is resistant to vaccines.
The new threat adds to the concerns investors are already facing: high inflation, tightening of monetary policy and slowing growth.
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“This is terrible news,” said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote. “The new variant of Covid could affect the economic recovery, but this time the central banks won’t have enough room to act. You cannot fight inflation and stimulate growth at the same time. You have to decide. “
Shares in Biontech and Moderna are up double-digit
And there was virus frustration instead of shopping pleasure: The stocks of US retailers are going downhill sharply. The tills should actually ring because of the discount battle on “Black Friday”, but fear of the new Corona variant is causing the shares of the department stores Best Buy, Macy’s, and Nordstrom to drop by between 3.5 and 6 percent. The fashion companies Guess, American Eagle Outfitters, Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch also lose up to six percent.
The shares of airlines, including American, United, Southwest, Delta, and JetBlue, are also slipping significantly after news of the new Covid-19 variant. Cruise stocks are also falling: Royal Caribbean is down ten percent, Carnival is down 13 percent and Norwegian is down ten percent.
On the winning side are stocks that already benefited from the Covid 19 pandemic last year: Zoom Video rose 7.4 percent, while Peloton gained 4.1 percent.
The appearance of the new coronavirus variant also makes vaccine providers more attractive again for investors. The shares of the German biotech company Biontech rise by almost 16 percent. In the USA, the titles of their development partner Pfizer gain a good five percent. The competitors Moderna and Novavax add 23 and 7.3 percent respectively.
Further individual values in focus
Didi Global: According to a report by business intelligence service Bloomberg, the driver service agent has been asked by Chinese regulators to begin delisting from the New York Stock Exchange. The reason should be concerns about data security. The stock slips by 5.6 percent. The stocks of the two major Didi shareholders Softbank from Japan and Tencent from China fell by 5.2 and three percent respectively.
Tesla: The company will invest $ 188 million to expand manufacturing capacity at its Shanghai factory. This is reported by the state-sponsored newspaper Beijing Daily. The Tesla shares give way 2.6 percent.
Microsoft: CEO Satya Nadella has sold 839,000 units, a little more than half of his Microsoft shares. The share is down 0.4 percent.
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