The market-wide S&P 500 lost 2.42 percent to 3009.05 points on Friday. The Nasdaq 100 fell 2.50 percent to 9,849.35 points after the technology-heavy index of the Nasdaq stock market reached a record high on Tuesday. Hopes that the trough for the global economy will not become quite as deep in view of extensive aid packages and increasing relaxation of virus-related restrictions in the individual countries had been fueled.
Meanwhile, however, the corona fear is present again. With around 40,000 reported cases, the number of new infections with the virus in the US hit a new high on Thursday. This surpassed the previous record of around 36,400 new infections from April 24, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University. Two weeks ago, the daily reported infection numbers were a little more than half of the value on Thursday. On the economic side, the data was also mixed. Consumer spending recovered strongly in May, but not quite as clearly as expected. The consumer confidence survey conducted by the University of Michigan for June was also somewhat disappointing.
Market analyst Edward Moya from broker Oanda sees a growing danger that the US economy will not recover quite as rapidly as previous economic data signaled after the gradual easing. In particular, new, at least regional, lockdowns could slow down a V-shaped recovery. On this very day, for example, the governor of Texas ordered bars and pubs to be closed due to the corona dangers.
The bet on a quick recovery of the economy plus the stimuli from the central banks and governments had recently been the most important driver of the price recovery on the stock exchanges.
Among the industries, the focus on that day was primarily the banking sector: After the shares of the big US banks had risen significantly the previous day due to the relaxation of some corona restrictions, things went down after the stress test of the US Federal Reserve from the previous evening. The Fed waved all banks through and issued a positive report, but imposed conditions: In order to conserve their capital resources, the largest banks are not allowed to increase dividends or buy back their own shares at least until the end of the third quarter.
In the Dow, the shares of Goldman Sachs were at the bottom with minus 8.7 percent, JPMorgan followed in third place with minus 5.5 percent. In the S&P 100, the shares of Morgan Stanley, Bank of New York Mellon, US Bancorp, Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo lost up to 7.4 percent.
For the shares of Nike it went in the Dow after the quarterly figures published the previous evening by 7.6 percent. The sporting goods manufacturer had posted a quarterly loss of more than three quarters of a billion US dollars due to the corona pandemic.
Twitter also posted heavy losses with minus 7.4 percent and Facebook with minus 8.3 percent, although Facebook shares had only reached a record high on Tuesday. The consumer goods giant Unilever and the car manufacturer Honda announced on Friday that they would no longer place any advertisements on the online network and its subsidiary Instagram in the USA for the time being. This means that a boycott campaign against the platform that was started the previous week because of its controversial handling of racist, inflammatory and manipulative content is attracting a significant number of visitors.
During the course of US trading, the euro temporarily fell below the US $ 1.12 mark and then recovered. At the close of the Wall Street market, the common currency was priced at $ 1.1229. The European Central Bank had set the reference rate in Frankfurt trade at 1.1213 (Thursday: 1.1200) dollars. The dollar cost 0.8918 (0.8929) euros.
On the US bond market, trend-setting ten-year government bonds rose 14/32 points to 99 27/32 points and returned 0.638 percent./ck/mis
— By Claudia Müller, dpa-AFX —
(AWP)
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