Markets mixed as COVID-19 cases rise

Markets were mixed on Friday.

The S&P 500 was flat but the STOXX Europe 600 jumped 1.3 percent.

Earlier in Asia, the Shanghai Composite rose 0.1 percent but the Nikkei 225 fell 0.4 percent.

In the US, a report on Friday showed that retail sales rose 1.9 percent in September, a gain that Mike Loewengart, director of investment strategy at E-Trade Financial, said “suggests consumer strength is pretty robust”, adding that “momentum on that front could be a positive for the market as investors look for signs of recovery”.

However, another report showed that US industrial production fell 0.6 percent in September, which economists at Oxford Economics said is “one of the first real signs that the recovery is losing momentum”.

Indeed, the US could be facing a tough winter as the total number of COVID-19 cases surpassed 8 million on Friday.

The country has averaged more than 53,000 new daily cases for the past week, an increase of more than 55 percent in just over a month.

It is even worse in Europe, where cases have now overtaken the US, averaging roughly 97,000 new cases per day, up 44 percent from one week ago.