Stock prices on the US and European stock exchanges fell mostly on Tuesday, as investors feared that the spread of the new coronavirus delta variant could slow down the global economic recovery.
The New Zealand government on Tuesday imposed a strict quarantine regime across the country for at least three days after approving one local case of Covid-19. Melbourne, Australia’s second largest city, was scheduled for Monday due to an outbreak of the delta variant.
These measures heightened concerns about the quarantine of Covid-19 and travel restrictions in China, the world’s second largest economy.
Wall Street’s Dow Jones Industrial Average and Standard & Poor’s 500, which had hit new highs for five days in a row, fell on Tuesday and the Nasdaq Composite also declined.
This came after worries about the latest Covid-19 wave, according to the US Department of Commerce, that US retail sales fell 1.1% month-on-month in July, marking a faster-than-expected decline.
Asian and European stock markets fell for the second day in a row. The exception was the London Stock Exchange, whose index rose 0.4% after the release of data that unemployment in the UK fell to 4.7% in April-June, compared with 4.8% in the three months to May. This fall in unemployment can be explained by the gradual easing of measures to control the coronavirus.
The share price of mining company BHP on the London Stock Exchange rose by more than 7% following the company’s announcement of the sale of its liquid fossil fuel industry in an effort to switch to cleaner energy.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.8% to 35,343.28 points on Tuesday, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 0.7% to 4,448.08 points, and the Nasdaq Composite index fell 0.9% to 14,656.18 points.
The London Stock Exchange index FTSE 100 rose 0.4% to 7181.11 points on Tuesday, the Frankfurt stock exchange index DAX 30 fell less than 0.1% to 15,921.95 points, while the Paris stock exchange index CAC 40 fell 0.3% to 6819.84 points.
In the New York Stock Exchange e-commerce, the price of WTI crude fell by 1.0% to USD 66.59 per barrel on Tuesday. The price of Brent crude fell 0.7% to $ 69.03 a barrel on the London Stock Exchange.
The euro fell against the US dollar from 1.1778 to 1.1712 dollars per euro on Tuesday, the British pound against the US dollar fell from 1.3849 to 1.3736 dollars per pound, and the US dollar against the Japanese yen rose from 109.24 to 109.59 yen per dollar. The value of the euro against the British pound rose from 85.05 to 85.24 pence per euro.
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