Market close: US shares run red on Black Friday
By Joseph Toppe
18:43, 26 November 2021
The major US gauges bottomed out on Black Friday as a new Covid-19 variant in South Africa sent the annual shopping day into a sell-off for traders.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted around 905 points, or 2.5%, to post its worst day of the year, while the S&P 500 went down 2.3% and the Nasdaq Composite was right behind with a 2.2% dip during session trading.
At its session low, the Blue-Chip Dow lost over 1,000 points.
New Covid-19 scare spurs Black Friday sell-off
On 25 November, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) in South Africa announced the detection of a new variant of the SARS-COV-2, the virus that is responsible for the pandemic, following genomic sequencing.
The variant is currently labelled as lineage B.1.1.529.
The emergence of this new variant coincides with a sudden increase in cases in the Gauteng province over recent days and accordingly is being closely monitored by the health authorities in South Africa, according to the release.
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Winners and losers: Covid-19 vax shares spike higher, travel shares nosedive
As most US shares began freefalls on Friday, healthcare stock related to the Covid-19 virus went higher.
Shares for Pfizer jumped 5% and shares for Moderna went up 27%.
Travel stocks are being hit hardest during Friday trading as shares for Carnival and Royal Caribbean are both down over 10%.
Shares for United Airlines are down 13% after being down just 9% halfway through the shortened session, while shares for American Airlines fell 12.5%.
In other travel stocks, shares for Carnival Corp. sank 13.5% while shares for Royal Caribbean went down 11.9%
Oil: Crude is down amid new travel concerns
On Friday, January Brent crude fell $8.50, or 10.3%, to $73.72 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe, while the US benchmark, West Texas Intermediate crude, sank more than 11%.
In other energy stocks, natural-gas futures rose 2.5% at $5.241 per million British thermal units, while December gasoline dropped 11.6% to $2.0497 a gallon, and December heating oil slipped 11.5% to $2.1066 a gallon.
On Friday, December gold futures went up $13.10 to $1,797.40 an ounce.
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