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Wall Street stocks skidded sharply lower on Black Friday as investors reacted to fresh travel bans resulting from the discovery in South Africa of a new variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
the S&P 500 index
SPX
and the Nasdaq Composite
COMP
were all down by at least 2% for the day known as Black Friday, one of the major shopping days after the Thanksgiving holiday Thursday.
Looking beneath the hood, the damage was widespread:
Energy stocks
The S&P 500’s energy sector
XX:SP500
closed down 4% as crude-oil prices
XLE
trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange saw double-digit percentage declines.
The Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund
XLE
was down 4%. The fund was led by declines in APA Corp.
APA,
Occidental Petroleum
OXY,
Devon Energy Corp.
DVN
and Marathon Oil Corp.
MRO.
Financials
Financials were the second-worst performer on Black Friday among the 11 sectors in the S&P 500 index
SPX,
dragged down by a retreat in yields for Treasurys, notably the 10-year Treasury note
BX:TMUBMUSD10Y.
The S&P 500’s financial sector
XX:SP500
was off 3.3%. The Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF
XLF,
which tracks the sector index, was being led lower by declines in American Express Co.
AXP,
Comerica Inc.
CMA,
Huntington Bancshares Inc
HBAN.
, Wells Fargo & Co.
WFC,
and Invesco
IVZ.
Drug stocks
Drugmakers rose, with Moderna shares
MRNA,
which makes COVID vaccines, skyrocketing more than 20%. Pfizer shares PFE advanced by 6%.
However, those gains didn’t offer much of a lift to pharmaceutical related funds, including Invesco Dynamic Pharmaceuticals ETF
PJP,
down 1.6%, iShares U.S. Pharmaceuticals ETF
IHE,
up 0.2%, and SPDR S&P Pharmaceuticals ETF
XPH,
down 1.9% on Friday.
Travel-related stocks
The popular airline related ETF, U.S. Global JETS, which was has come to represent a good indicator of the market’s view on the progress out of pandemic-related restrictions and toward economic recovery, closed down 7.2%.
Aircraft maker Boeing Co.
BA
retreated by 5%, Southwest Airlines
LUV
stock was more than 4% lower. Shares for American Airlines
AAL
slumped 8.8%. Meanwhile, Expedia
EXPE
shares were down9.5% and United Airlines
UAL
was trading off almost 10%.
A separate exchange-traded fund that is sometimes used to represent optimism about changes in activity tied to COVID restrictions, the ETFMG Travel Tech ETF
AWAY,
was down 6.4% on Friday.
Stay-at-home trades
However, a number of stay-at-home trades were outperforming the broader market. Video conference company Zoom Video Communications Inc.
ZM
rose 5.7%, while Netflix
NFLX
gained 1.1%.
The Direxion Work From Home ETF,
WFH
lost 1.2%. Declines in Avaya Holdings Corp.
AVYA,
Xerox Holdings Corp.
XRX,
and Progress Software Corp.
PRGS,
were the worst performers in the ETF.
Crypto
Crypto prices also were taking it on the chin.
Bitcoin
BTCUSD
was down 5% over the past 24 hours, recently trading at $54,840 midday Friday on CoinDesk. The cryptocurrency is down more than 20% from its all-time high of $68,990 on Nov. 10, meeting the commonly used criteria for a bear market in an asset.
Check out: Major cryptocurrencies tumble amid concern about new COVID variant
The dollar
Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar was down 0.7% on the session as measured by the ICE U.S. Dollar Index
DXY,
dragging it down from around a 16-month high.
