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New York Wall Street
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Bryan Smith / dpa
The newly discovered variant of the coronavirus has frightened investors around the world and caused prices to slide on the stock exchanges.
At times, the Dax and EuroStoxx50 collapsed as badly as they did during the stock market crash in March 2020, when the first wave of pandemics had fueled fears of recession.
According to experts, the mutation of the Covid 19 pathogen discovered in South Africa could be more contagious than the currently rampant Delta type and more resistant to the previous vaccines.
Against the background of new travel restrictions, the index of European travel and tourism values collapsed by up to 7.3 percent.
The course of Lufthansa alone fell by twelve percent.
There was a similarly strong downward trend on Wall Street for the airlines American Airlines, Delta and United.
The shares of the British cinema chain Cineworld and its US rival AMC each fell about seven percent.
Impending closings of amusement parks pushed the entertainment company Walt Disney in the pre-market US business 3.4 percent into the red to a twelve-month low of 146.20 dollars.
Vaccine manufacturer in the plus
The economic fears were also reflected in raw material prices: Speculations about a renewed decline in demand pushed the price of Brent oil from the North Sea almost six percent into the red to 77.51 dollars per barrel (159 liters). In addition, speculation about a possible oversupply weighed on the mood, said analyst Tamas Varga from the brokerage house PVM. An advisory body to Opec is forecasting this because of the release of strategic reserves by the USA and other countries. Against this backdrop, the index for the European oil and gas industry slipped 4.6 percent.
Vaccine manufacturers, on the other hand, are among those profiting from the stock exchanges.
Shares in the German biotech company BioNTech rose at times by almost six percent.
In the USA, the shares of their development partner Pfizer won a good five percent in the pre-trading session.
The competitors Moderna and Novavax gained up to 8.3 percent.
The shares of the US pharmaceutical company Merck & Co, which, like Pfizer, offers a drug for the treatment of corona patients, rose by around one percent
And other companies also benefited: Companies such as Delivery Hero or Hellofresh, which deliver food, or the mail order company Zalando were able to increase their prices.
“Safe havens” such as German government bonds and gold were in demand.
The precious metal gained a good one percent to $ 1,810 a troy ounce (31.1 grams).
rai / jlk / dpa / Reuters
