Wall Street ends lower, shaken by New York school closings
Steph Deschamps / November 19, 2020
The flagship DJIA index fell 1.16% to 29,438.42 points and the extended S&P 500 index also fell 1.16% to 3,567.79 points. The Nasdaq, with strong technological coloring, fell 0.82% to 11,801.60 points.
The day before, the DJIA or Dow Jones had lost 0.56%, the S&P 500 -0.48% and the Nasdaq had fallen by 0.21%.
New York's place, which was modestly well oriented in the morning, slipped into the red as soon as the mayor of New York announced the closure of the city's public schools on Thursday.
"We have reached the threshold of 3% test positivity: unfortunately, this means that schools will be closed from Thursday, November 19 as a precaution," tweeted Mayor Bill de Blasio.
"It was negative for the market," said Gregori Volokhine of Meeschaert Financial Services immediately.
"The markets have in mind now that it will be a difficult period, this second wave, but they also have in mind that almost every two or three days we wake up with positive news about a vaccine," he said. he explains.
Sooner or later things will get really better at the level of the epidemic and that will limit the abrupt movements, "he believes.
Art Hogan of National Securities, also stressed that this decline of Wall Street was "modest considering its very high level". Monday the Dow Jones had broken a record.
In the morning, the stock market had reacted well to the news that the vaccine from Pfizer laboratories (whose title took 0.75%) and BioNTech (+ 4.04%) was 95% effective in preventing Covid-19 , according to full results from their clinical trial.
This similar level to Moderna's (-4.57%) increases the chances that at least one vaccine will be able to start injecting in Americans before the end of the year.
For Boeing, the surge was short-lived. The title of the aircraft manufacturer, which was up in session after the authorization granted Wednesday by the United States Aviation Agency (FAA) to the 737 MAX to fly again, nevertheless ended down (-3.36%) .
The plane has been grounded for nearly two years following two accidents that killed 346 people in a five-month interval.
"After an initial reaction of enthusiasm, investors realized that Boeing was going to end up with 400 MAX on the arms which were built but which are not yet on firm orders (...) while the airlines are bloodless" , underlined the expert from Meeschaert.
In supermarkets, Target gained 2.36% after better than expected results, boosted by online orders delivered to store doors.
In the bond market, the yield on US 10-year debt rose a little to 0.8701% from 0.8570% the day before.