Stock Market Takes Big Hit as Virus Uncertainty Spreads

As many of us have long felt, deep in our bones, this week is going to be a doozy.

First and very much foremost, we have the 2020 election looming on Tuesday.  This has been one of the most vitriolic and heated political contests in modern history, leaving many Americans wondering if this is how their ancestral countrymen must have felt in the 1960’s…or even perhaps the 1860’s.

Even the candidates themselves have been forthcoming about the stressful stakes in the election, with Democratic nominee Joe Biden at one point calling the election a battle for “the should of our nation”.

This, on top of an economic crisis, spurred by a pandemic, and peppered with protests and riots over the long-standing sin of racial inequality in America.

Now, even the stock market is acting up.

U.S. stocks fell sharply on Wednesday amid concerns over the latest increase in coronavirus infections and its potential impact on the global economy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 800 points, or 2.9%. The S&P 500 slid 2.9% and the Nasdaq Composite traded 3% lower.

The U.S. indexes took their cues from the European market benchmarks. The German Dax index fell 4.2% to its lowest level since late May. The French CAC 40 slid 3.4%. The FTSE 100 in London closed 2.6% lower.

“Investors’ hopes that the Covid pandemic would not force further stringent mitigations measures and/or potential wholesale lockdowns that would push global economies back into ‘low-consumption mode’ appear to be coming under challenge,” said Yousef Abbasi, global market strategist at StoneX. “Avoiding these stringent measures has been a major tenant of the bullish thesis, particularly for those looking to value stocks and for a steeper yield-curve.”

While the news isn’t great for Americans in general, the Trump campaign is certainly going to have their work cut out for them in spinning the downturn.  Democratic operatives have spent the last several weeks attempting to draw a parallel between the worsening coronavirus crisis and the Trump administration’s actions.  Should the stock market truly be spooked by the coronavirus, Biden and his bevy of surrogates will continue to conjure connections between the White House and Wall Street.