(New York) The New York Stock Exchange rebounded Monday and regained much of the ground lost on Friday in its worst session of the year, as fears of the impact of the new Omicron variant sent indices plunging into a sluggish market. fabric.
According to final results at the close, the Dow Jones index advanced 0.68% to 35,135.94 points after falling 2.53% on Friday.
The tech-dominated NASDAQ gained 1.88% to 15,782.83 points after a loss of 2.23% while the broader S&P 500 index climbed 1.32% to 4,655.27 points after a decline by 2.27%.
The S & P / TSX Composite Index closed 23.04 points higher at 21,148.94 points.
There is “no reason to panic” over the spread of the new variant of COVID-19, US President Joe Biden said Monday in a speech at the White House.
The president added that he would present a detailed strategy to fight COVID-19 during the winter on Thursday, “not with closures or lockdowns, but by amplifying vaccination, recalls, testing.”
Ordinarily, the Thanksgiving Friday session, sandwiched between the most important holiday of the year in the United States and a weekend, is one of the quietest of the year for all American markets, with starving volumes.
But with the bad news of the detection of this new variant in South Africa, the three Wall Street indices had dropped more than 2%, a fall accentuated by low trading volumes.
“Very few people had participated in the market and when you take bad news and there is no cash, you tend to overreact,” said Art Hogan of National Securities.
Exaggerated
“The consensus is that the market has probably had an overreaction,” admitted the analyst, recalling that so far variants such as delta or new waves of COVID-19 infections “have a decreasing impact due to vaccinations, boosters and new therapies ”.
The title of vaccine manufacturer Pfizer, which had been spiked at the last meeting with the appearance of the variant detected in South Africa, finally dropped 2.96% to 52.40 dollars. The laboratory said it had already started work on a formulation of its vaccine against the Omicron variant on Friday.
“If the (current) vaccine protects less and we need to create a new vaccine, we started working on it on Friday, we made our first DNA model,” according to Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.
The boss of Pfizer, however, assured to be “quite confident” in the vaccine currently distributed.
The title of Moderna, on the other hand, jumped 11.80% to 368.51 dollars. The laboratory, which also produces a vaccine against COVID-19, announced Friday its intention to develop a specific booster dose for Omicron.
On another front, the Twitter action was suspended from listing at the start of the session until its CEO Jack Dorsey announced that he was leaving his executive functions at the head of the social network. The title ended down 2.78% to 45.76 dollars.
“I decided to quit Twitter because I think the company is ready to cut the cord with its founders,” explained Jack Dorsey.
Since his return to the helm of the company at the Blue Bird in October 2015, the relaxed entrepreneur has been regularly criticized for not having let go of the reins of his other company, the specialist in mobile payments Square, to be devote only to Twitter.
The eleven sectors of the S&P 500 moved in the green, guided by information technologies (+ 2.64%) and consumer goods (+ 1.63%).
On Monday, in terms of indicators, promises of home sales bolstered investor morale as they rebounded sharply in October in the United States, after a decline in September. Buyers are rushing ahead of the expected rise in rates, the National Federation of Real Estate Agents (NAR) said, and the index measuring signings of pledges to sell climbed 7.5%.
On the bond market, rates edged up to 1.51% from 1.47%.
with The Canadian Press