The day on the stock exchange ends with a black Friday. Uncontrolled sales hit the price lists of the main financial markets throughout the session. The news of the discovery of a new variant of the Coronavirus in South Africa was triggered by the wave of strong declines. The new strain, dubbed ‘Nu’, could be highly contagious. The news brought uncertainty to the markets right from the start: at the end of the day, the Stoxx 600, which includes the main stocks listed in the Old Continent, lost 3.7%. A decline is equivalent to approximately 390 billion in capitalization “burned” in a single session. It is not doing much better in New York with the major lists, Dow Jones and Nasdaq, down more than 2%.
The next news that the new variant could also have arrived in Belgium was intensifying sales. The European Health Agency said it is worthy of concern.
The fear of new restrictions on the way immediately led to substantial collapses. At Piazza Affari, the Ftse Mib index closed the day, which had already started with a heavy decline, down by 4.60% to 25,852 points, the minimum for the day. But the stock markets all ended in decline: the worst stock exchange among the largest in Europe was Madrid which lost 5%, followed by Paris in final decline of 4.7% and Frankfurt by 4.2%, with London which closed down 3.6%.
Sales were intensified by the collapse of oil in the red by more than 10 percentage points on the fear of new travel restrictions. Brent, in the evening, was quoted in the area of $ 73 (-10%) while the WTI moved in the area of $ 68 (-12%). Natural gas is also down, down 3% in the square in Amsterdam, at 90.22 euros per MWh, despite the arrival of the winter season. It goes without saying that the large oil companies were the ones most penalized by the moment of flight from the lists. In Milan, Eni lost over 6%.
Among the different sectors, heavy sales have hit the entire world of travel and tourism with the main airlines suffering double-digit losses. Lufthansa lost 10%, Air France KLM 9%. Conversely, vaccine companies have risen. Moderna gains 27%, Pfizer 5% and Johnson & Johnson is on par (+ 0.5%).
On the bond side, the US Treasury Note fell 1.50%. The ten-year BTP closed at 0.96% from 1.07% yesterday while the spread reached 128 basis points after breaking through the level of 130 points in the morning. Gold considered by investors to be the safe haven asset par excellence benefits from the moment of instability and rises by 1% towards the threshold of 1,800 dollars per ounce.
–
