Wall Street’s major indices tumbled more than 2 percent on Friday as several US states imposed business restrictions in response to a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Some US states that were spared the brunt of the initial coronavirus outbreak or moved early to lift restrictions are seeing a resurgence in new infections. On Friday, Texas and Florida ordered bars to close down again.
“You’re seeing a pretty dramatic increase in cases,” said Kevin Grogan, managing director of investment strategy at Buckingham Strategic Wealth in St Louis. “If people start feeling again like it’s not safe to eat out or go shopping, that could have a really negative impact on the stock market.”
A Wall Street Journal report that the “phase one” US-China trade deal could be at risk placed additional pressure on US stocks.
According to that report, Chinese officials said that “meddling” in Taiwan and Hong Kong could lead Beijing to back away from its commitment to purchase US farm goods.
“It added another log into the risk-aversion fire,” Oanda Corp senior market analyst Edward Moya said in New York.
Among sectors, financial, communication services and energy shares outpaced the broader S&P 500 in declines. S&P 500 bank shares plummeted 6.1 percent after the US Federal Reserve limited dividend payments and barred share repurchases until at least the fourth quarter following its annual stress test.
Renewed concerns over the pandemic has threatened to derail a strong rally for Wall Street that has erased much of the S&P 500’s steep losses from March.
The benchmark index ended below its 200-day moving average, an indicator of long-term momentum.
The uptick in coronavirus cases likely triggered a test of that technical level, said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at the Leuthold Group LLC in Minneapolis.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 730.05 points, or 2.84 percent, to 25,015.55, the S&P 500 lost 74.71 points, or 2.42 percent, to 3,009.05 and the NASDAQ Composite dropped 259.78 points, or 2.59 percent, to 9,757.22.
For the week, the S&P 500 fell 2.87 percent, the Dow lost 3.31 percent, and the NASDAQ shed 1.87 percent.
Facebook Inc shares shed 8.3 percent, weighing the most on the S&P 500, after Unilever PLC and Verizon Communications Inc joined an advertising boycott that called out the social media giant for not doing enough to stop hate speech on its platforms.
Nike Inc shares dropped 7.6 percent as the footwear maker, hurt by store closures due to the pandemic, posted a surprise quarterly loss.
Gap Inc shares surged 18.8 percent after the retail chain entered a 10-year deal with rapper and fashion designer Kanye West to create a line of clothing under his Yeezy brand.
Friday also marked the reconstitution of the FTSE Russell indexes, including the large-cap Russell 1000 and small-cap Russell 2000.
Daily trading volume is often among its highest levels of the year during the reconstitution, though volume this year has spiked on several occasions amid steep market sell-offs.
Volume on US exchanges was 16.43 billion shares on Friday, compared with the 13.44 billion average for the full session over the past 20 trading days.
Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the New York Stock Exchange by a 3.99-to-1 ratio; on NASDAQ, a 3.57-to-1 ratio favored decliners.
The S&P 500 posted five new 52-week highs and no new lows; the NASDAQ Composite recorded 59 new highs and 28 new lows.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS