Roundup: U.S. equities book weekly losses amid COVID-19 concerns, economic data
NEW YORK, Sept. 11– U.S. stocks declined for the week as investors remained cautious amid surging COVID-19 infections, while digesting a slew of economic data. U.S. financial markets were closed on Monday for Labor Day. The S&P U.S. Listed China 50 index, which is designed to track the performance of the 50 largest Chinese companies listed on U.S. exchanges by total…
NEW YORK, Sept. 11 (Xinhua) — U.S. stocks declined for the week as investors remained cautious amid surging COVID-19 infections, while digesting a slew of economic data.
For the holiday-abbreviated trading week ending Friday, the Dow fell 2.2 percent, the S&P 500 slid 1.7 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite lost 1.6 percent. U.S. financial markets were closed on Monday for Labor Day.
The S&P U.S. Listed China 50 index, which is designed to track the performance of the 50 largest Chinese companies listed on U.S. exchanges by total market cap, logged a weekly decrease of 1.9 percent.
The above market reactions came as the pandemic continues in the United States, with the Delta variant in a sustained uptrend and hospitalizations on the rise.
More than 40.8 million COVID-19 cases have been reported in the United States with nearly 660,000 related fatalities as of Saturday afternoon, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
The average daily increase of cases in the country was over 136,700 in the seven-day period ending Thursday, showed the latest statistics compiled by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday announced sweeping new vaccine requirements, which may affect about 100 million Americans, as part of a new action plan to curb the surging COVID-19 cases driven by the highly contagious Delta variant.
Investors worried that a rapid spread of COVID-19’s Delta variant would threaten an economic recovery.
The August U.S. employment data released earlier already made many market participants frustrated as the report showed the Delta variant has cast a shadow over the labor market.
Total nonfarm payroll employment in the United States rose by a mere 235,000 last month, far less than analysts’ estimate of 720,000 jobs.
Wall Street continued to parse a batch of latest data to assess the shape of the economy.
The Producer Price Index for final demand in the United States increased 0.7 percent in August, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday, slightly above the market forecast of 0.6 percent.
Prices for final demand less foods, energy, and trade services moved up 0.3 percent in August after increasing 0.9 percent in July, showed the report.
“Supply chain bottlenecks have persisted longer and more intensely than most predicted at the beginning of this year, and widespread labor shortages are among the main input issues producers are dealing with,” Will Compernolle, senior economist at FHN Financial, said Friday in a note.
“The Fed’s focus has been on labor market tightening and what it means for tapering, but lingering supply chain issues are already starting to change the conversation about inflation,” Compernolle added.
The U.S. Federal Reserve is set to kick off a two-day meeting on Sept. 21, and investors will look to its policy update.
Meanwhile, a separate report by the Department of Labor on Thursday showed U.S. initial jobless claims, a rough way to measure layoffs, decreased by 35,000 to 310,000 in the week ending Sept. 4, marking a fresh pandemic-era low.
Mitch Zacks, CEO at Zacks Investment Management, underscored “the importance of keeping an eye on economic indicators as opposed to making emotional, knee-jerk reactions.”
“Looking ahead, investors should weigh how different factors could affect earnings relative to expectations, and also how interest rates may move relative to expectations,” he said Saturday in a note. Enditem
