It’s a new week in the financial markets, and one that starts similarly to how it did in 2020: with panic about the coronavirus pandemic.
The number of Covid-19 infections since the start of the pandemic worldwide sits at just under 258 million today, with a total of 5.1 million fatalities. The rate of daily infections is currently similar to what we saw at the end of the July-September wave, only now we are situated at the beginning of another one, rather than its end.
The countries with the highest number of infections yesterday are the United Kingdom (40K), Russia (37K), Germany (37K), the United States (27K), Turkey (21K), and the Netherlands (20K). They are closely followed by several other European countries, which are also wrestling with a heavy Covid-19 outbreak.
Austria already entered a new lockdown, the first for this fall/winter season in the EU, and Germany might have to enter one soon.
At the same time, there have been protests in several countries across Europe, where people want to avoid having to go into a new lockdown. Still, health experts say it might be unavoidable, unless all of the vaccination hesitancy that the bloc has been fighting against for a year now miraculously disappears and everyone gets vaccinated in the next few weeks.
China, another country whose economy is struggling a bit in the current market situation, announced that it would rely on a looser monetary policy (mostly in terms of stimulus) in order to fight the economic slowdown it is experiencing.
As for the stock markets, today US indices will trade slightly higher, mostly boosted by last week’s encouraging reports from the United States and increasing hopes that the Federal Reserve will implement an interest rate hike sooner in 2022 than expected.
A company to keep an eye on today is Activision Blizzard, whose CEO is facing internal pressure to step down; he confirmed that he will do so if he is unable to resolve the sexual harassment scandals currently plaguing the company.
