Stimulus Discussion Drags While Global Equities Drop

Once again, the global stock market looks as if it’s going to end the week low. As usual, one of the main culprits for the drop are U.S. politics, or more precisely, the delay on a $908 billion pandemic relief fund. Aiding that is the mixed nature of news regarding the ongoing pandemic of COVID-19.

In Europe, we saw the European Central Bank (ECB) enhance its pandemic-related asset-buying program by a whopping 500 billion EUR. However, that led to a drop of 0.9% in the Stoxx Europe 600 index. Asian stocks were somewhat more diverse, but there was one definite loser. Namely, the China CSI 300 index fell by 1%, resulting in a total loss of 3.5% for the entire week.

The U.S. didn’t have it any better, seeing drops on multiple major indexes. As such, we could see Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fall over 200 points. Following the pattern are Nasdaq-100 and S&P 500, with a matching fall of 0.8%. Weekly jobless claims continue to rise.

Some drugmakers also had quite a rough week, starting with France’s Sanofi. The company announced that they had production difficulties with the COVID-19 vaccine theý’re working on, causing delays. The French firm is working with the U.K.’s GlaxoSmithKline. The issue that they found in phase 1-2 testing was an unsatisfactory immune response with elderly patients.

More bad news came from Australia, as CSL and the University of Queensland halted their vaccine plans due to false-positives on HIV tests. The unfortunate situation caused CSL’s shares to suffer a significant drop of more than 3%.

Some more encouraging news came from the U.S. late on Thursday. Namely, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee recommended Pfizer vaccine approval. The only thing that’s left before the FDA’s final decision regarding Pfizer and BioNTech’s medication is a vote.