Saturday 19 September 2020

Markets fall amid US-China tension and Europe COVID-19 resurgence

Markets were mostly lower on Friday.

The S&P 500 fell 1.1 percent and the STOXX Europe 600 fell 0.7 percent.

Earlier in the day, though, the Shanghai Composite jumped 2.1 percent.

Concerns about tensions between the US and China increased after the US Commerce Department said on Friday that it is prohibiting transactions involving Tencent’s WeChat and Bytedance’s TikTok, adding that “the President has provided until November 12 for the national security concerns posed by TikTok to be resolved”.

In Europe, concerns over the resurgence in COVID-19 was the focus of investors as several countries announced new restrictions on movement.

“We are now seeing a second wave coming in,” said UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

“If the uptick in cases becomes strong enough that lockdowns have to be tightened to a point that it derails the economic recovery, then it becomes a risk factor,” said Mobeen Tahir, associate director of research at fund house Wisdom Tree.

No comments:

Post a Comment