Friday 18 August 2017

Markets fall amid concerns over terrorism and US presidency

Markets fell on Thursday.

The S&P 500 plunged 1.5 percent, the STOXX Europe 600 fell 0.6 percent and the Nikkei 225 fell 0.1 percent.

US stocks were particularly hit by news of a suspected terrorism attack in Barcelona, Spain and concerns that Gary Cohn was resigning as economic adviser to President Donald Trump.

“With the light volume, Barcelona is not something that the market is going to handle well,” said Mark Kepner, managing director of sales and trading at Themis Trading.

“There’s no direct market impact in what Trump has done recently, but if things continue to be so polarized that his agenda is completely dead on arrival, that would have a negative impact,” said Mark Spellman, portfolio manager at Alpine Funds.

Indeed, Brett Arends at MarketWatch noted that over the past 100 years, when the US president has become too politically weakened to lead effectively, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost an average of 14 percent of its value in constant dollars.

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