Wall Street’s main indexes fell about 1% at the open on Monday for a variety of reasons — all of which revolve around the COVID-19 pandemic and the new variants of the virus that has resulted in a spike of infections both nationally and globally. The main indexes dropped, mainly because travel stocks and economy-linked value stocks taking a hit.
Because of this rise in infections worldwide, many people are worried that the huge economic growth that was forecasted for this year may fall short. If the virus continues to spread because of these new variants — mainly the Delta variant — then we could experience mask mandates and closures or regulations of some type. This could be seen both locally on a state level, nationally, and internationally.
Per this latest Wall Street news, it does appear that many are nervous about the economic recovery. As of this morning, the Dow fell about 463 points.
The United States isn’t the only country worried about the future. Britain is also currently struggling to deal with new COVID-19 variants that are allowing infections to surge. As a result of their complicated, strict travel system, airline companies have continued to struggle to do business as they did before the pandemic. A lot of consumers are confused about where they can and cannot travel to — and some are obviously still worried about traveling during an ongoing pandemic, even if they are vaccinated.
On Friday, Britain announced that they were scrapping an easing of travel regulations that they had planned to enact, which would have allowed fully vaccinated UK travelers to travel easily between France and England. However, France has seen rising COVID-19 cases, so the UK government scrapped this new plan.
As a result, the UK airline companies’ stocks have been hit. IAG and easyJet, both based in the UK, have lost as much as 6% of their shares because of this surprise change in traveling between England and France. TUI and Jet2 were also down about 3%.
As Europe deals with this new surge in the pandemic, United States economists and officials are closely watching the situation unfold. In the United States alone, we’ve also had a surge in virus cases that has already resulted in changes back to how things were when the pandemic first started. For example, Los Angeles has required a mask mandate again as virus cases have started to soar in the city once again. Children in school are also now required to wear masks in the city to attempt to combat the spread.
Los Angeles is a city that needs travel to really thrive, as so many of their businesses rely on catering to tourists. Travel to LA has definitely been down because of the pandemic. As cases surge in the city, and now as the mask mandate is back, there’s no telling how this may affect the businesses.
Therefore, business activity may be affected both on local and national scales. Both in the United States and worldwide, businesses, governments, and people are struggling to combat the pandemic, just when everyone thought things were getting back to normal.
