On Wednesday, U.S. stocks encountered another sell-off within the week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 943 points (-3.43%) to 26520, the S&P 500 slumped 119 points (-3.53%) to 3271, and the Nasdaq 100 plunged 456 points (-3.93%) to 11142.
Nasdaq 100 (Daily Chart) : Turning Down
Investors were deeply worried that the surge in coronavirus cases worldwide, particularly in Europe and the U.S., would lead to further lockdown measures.
Transportation (-4.86%), Software & Services (-4.47%) and Media (-4.45%) sectors performed the worst. CH Robinson Worldwide (CHRW -11.45%), Carnival Corp (CCL -10.61%), Unum Group (UNM -9.21%) and United Parcel Service (UPS -8.82%) were top losers. Microsoft (MSFT -4.96%) and Boeing Co (BA -4.57%) also fell.
General Electric (GE +4.51%) and Automatic Data Processing (ADP +6.2%) gained after reporting better-than-expected results.
Approximately 65% (70% in the prior session) of stocks in the S&P 500 Index were trading above their 200-day moving average and 30% (42% in the prior session) were trading above their 20-day moving average.
The VIX Index, Wall Street’s fear gauge, jumped a further 6.93 points (+20.78%) to 40.28.
Later today, Apple (AAPL -4.63%), Amazon.com (AMZN -3.76%), Alphabet (GOOGL -5.51%) and Facebook (FB -5.51%) will report quarterly earnings.
European stocks ended deep in the red. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index slumped 2.95%, Germany’s DAX 30 plunged 4.17%, France’s CAC 40 tumbled 3.37%, and the U.K.’s FTSE 100 sank 2.55%.
U.S. Treasury prices were little changed, as the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield ticked up to 0.780%.
Spot gold dropped $31.23 (-1.64%) to $1,876 an ounce.
U.S. WTI crude futures (December) fell $2.23 (-5.64%) to $37.34 a barrel.
On the forex front, the U.S. dollar strengthened further against other major currencies as investors sought safe-haven assets amid a sell-off in the stock market. The ICE Dollar Index jumped 0.53% to 93.43, back above both 20-day and 50-day moving averages.
EUR/USD dropped 0.42% to 1.1746 extending its decline to a fourth session. Governments of Germany and France are imposing new lockdowns to curb rising virus cases.
GBP/USD lost the key 1.3000 level as it slipped 0.46% to 1.2983.
USD/JPY edged down 0.09% to 104.32, while AUD/USD plunged 1.19% to 0.7044,
USD/CAD surged 1.05% to 1.3323. As expected, Canada’s central bank kept its key interest rate unchanged at 0.25%, saying that such a low rate would stay until 2023.
Meanwhile, the Turkish lira sank to a record low of 8.3287 against the dollar.
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