(New York) The New York Stock Exchange rebounded to open Monday after its worst session of the year on Friday, caused by fears that the coronavirus variant Omicron could weigh on the global economy.
Around 10 a.m., the Dow Jones index advanced 0.34%, the NASDAQ jumped 1.50%, the S&P 500 rose 0.99%.
Friday, the flagship index of Wall Street had dropped 2.53% to finish at 34,899.34 points. The NASDAQ index, with strong technological coloring, had fallen by 2.23%, to 15,491.66 points and the extended S&P 500 index, by 2.27%, to 4,594.62 points.
“This variant, released to the public so to speak on Friday, has not been well received by the market,” commented Patrick O’Hare of Briefing.
“Around the world, major markets fell more than 2% as investors started to think about the worst – that it was more contagious, more severe and could outsmart the worst. current vaccines ”.
“Today, the anxiety has eased a little” and the American market is picking up again. According to him, this rebound was explained by many downward purchases based “on the hope that omicron can be channeled by current vaccines and treatments as well as by new vaccine formulations that can be ready quite quickly” .
The title of vaccine maker Pfizer climbed 2.31% to $ 55 as the company 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,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.
The boss of Pfizer, however, assured to be “quite confident” in the vaccine currently distributed.
The anti-COVID-19 pill also developed by the group to treat the disease, which has demonstrated an effectiveness of 89% against hospitalizations and deaths during clinical trials, was also “developed with the idea that mutations” virus would appear, also noted Albert Bourla.
The title of Moderna (+ 8.41% to 358 dollars) also benefited from the prospects of vaccinations. 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 share was suspended from trading early in the session pending an announcement. Press reports indicated that its CEO Jack Dorsey was stepping down as head of the social network. Shortly before his suspension, the action advanced 3.40% to 48.68 dollars.
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 devote only to Twitter.
The eleven sectors of the S&P 500 were in the green, led by information technology (+ 1.56%) and the energy sector (+ 1.50%) as oil prices rebounded more than 5% after Friday’s tumble.
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. On the oil market, the two crude references had lost more than 10% on Friday in the space of a single session, a first since the start of the pandemic, in April 2020.
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 on Monday, and the index measuring signings of pledges to sell climbed 7.5%.
On the bond market, rates were tight to 1.55% against 1.47%.