Wall Street: Omikron and Federal Reserve Chairman weigh on Dow

The recovery attempt by the US stock exchanges came to an end on Tuesday for the time being. Investors continued to be plagued by concerns about the new Omikron coronavirus variant.

In addition, statements made by US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell were annoying, because the Fed is apparently heading for a faster reduction in its securities purchases. Powell indicated that high inflation in the US might not be a passing phenomenon after all.

Annual balance nevertheless positive

The Dow Jones Industrial finally fell 1.86 percent to 34,483.72 points, adding one more to the mostly cloudy month of November. Overall, the minus for the US benchmark index in the penultimate month of the year is 3.7 percent. The previous annual balance sheet is still clearly positive at 12.7 percent. Another relief is likely to be that the 200-day line, which is currently slightly below 34,350 points and signals the longer-term trend in the Dow, has held up so far.

The market-wide S&P 500 fell by 1.90 percent to 4567.00 meters. After an initially stable course, the Nasdaq 100 lost 1.61 percent to 16,135.92 points. He continues to record a monthly profit, which, however, shrank to 1.8 percent. The current annual plus is still around a quarter.

Downward trend at Moderna and Biontech

For the shares of Moderna and Biontech, after strong gains in the past two trading days, things went down by 4.4 percent and 3.0 percent, respectively. Moderna boss Stephane Bancel told the Financial Times that the existing vaccines are likely to have problems with the Omikron variant. It will probably take longer before sufficiently adapted preparations can be produced.

Novavax, meanwhile, gained 7.6 percent and thus made up for some of the heavy losses of the previous day. The US pharmaceutical company applied for market approval for its protein-based corona vaccine in the EU just under two weeks ago.

Euros on the downside

The shares of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, lost 4.0 percent on the Nasdaq. The British competition authority CMA wants to force the tech company to resell the clip platform Giphy, which it took over last year. The merger would weaken the competition between online services in Great Britain, it said. A meta spokesperson said it was being considered to appeal.

Apple were among the few winners on this gloomy trading day. The papers of the iPhone manufacturer rose at the top of the Dow by 3.2 percent and thus closed only slightly below their record high of just under 166 US dollars, which was reached on November 22nd.

The euro initially fell sharply in US trading, but then recovered noticeably and cost $ 1.1340 at the close of the Wall Street market. Before that, it had dropped to $ 1.1236 at times. The European Central Bank had previously set the reference rate at 1.1363 (Monday: 1.1276) dollars. The dollar cost 0.8800 (0.8868) euros.