As political talks continue between Congress and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on a new budget funding package in the face of the coronavirus crisis, the New York Stock Exchange ended Thursday without a clear path. Faced with the increase in Covid-19 cases, weekly jobs figures indicated a sharp downturn in this sector in the United States. On the vaccine front on Thursday, the FDA convened its advisory committee to decide on the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccines. In the first minutes of listing, Airbnb (up 113 per cent) made an explosive debut on the Nasdaq by doubling in volume. The company raised about $3.7 billion in the trading with a valuation of more than $100 billion.
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At the close, at 29,999 points, the Dow Jones was down 0.23 percent, symbolically finishing below the 30,000-point mark, while the S&P 500’s large index fell 0.13 percent to 3,668 points and the Nasdaq Composite index, rich in technology and biotech stocks, added 0.54 percent to 12,405 points after a drop of -1.9 percent on Wednesday.
The markets responded little to the ECB’s announcement that its pandemic emergency procurement program (PEPP) would increase by EUR 500 billion, which had been widely expected.
Earlier in the day, Asian markets ended in a fragmented order (-0.2% for Nikkei, -0.04% for Shanghai Composite) as well as European markets (-0.2% for Nikkei, -0.04% for Shanghai Composite) (-0.33 percent for the DAX 30 and 0.05 percent for the CAC 40).
In Europe, investors have responded little to the ECB’s announcements, which have worked as expected to increase and expand its emergency pandemic procurement program (PEPP). The purchasing amount was thus raised from EUR 1,350 billion to EUR 1,850 billion (an increase of 500 billion euros). ECB President Christine Lagarde also called on countries to provide more financial support by opening a two-day EU summit on the potential 750 billion EU Covid-19 support packages.