Shares fell on Friday as President-elect Joe Biden unveiled a $ 1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package, banks fell after the start of profit and sales season retail in the US were worse than expected.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 359 points, or 1.16%, to 30,632, the S&P 500 fell 1.1% and the Nasdaq fell 1.06%. Shares fell in the last hour of trading on Thursday. The Dow and Nasdaq had set intraday record highs during the session.
Biden’s “American Rescue Plan” includes $ 1,400 for individuals, in addition to the $ 600 provided in the latest relief bill. Other elements of the plan include the extension of supplementary unemployment payments and the moratorium on evictions and foreclosures until September.
The president-elect’s plan also provides funding for the deployment of vaccines to help fight the coronavirus pandemic that has killed nearly 389,000 Americans since Thursday.
The size of the aid package, as well as the potential for tax increases, has many on Wall Street worried that Biden will not get congressional support for his proposals.
“To some extent, most of this optimism had been fixed in prices, but the huge figures had also called into question whether the necessary bipartisan support for this huge sum would materialize,” Jingyi Pan said. Singapore-based market strategist for IG.
Shares of JPMorgan Chase (JPM) – Get the report, Wells Fargo (WFC) – Get the report and Citigroup (C) – Get the report fell Friday after big banks reported their fourth-quarter profits.
JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, posted much stronger-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings as investment banking profits increased and the company made a profit of $ 1.9 billion for its previous credit provisions.
“While the positive evolution of vaccines and incentives contributed to this release of reserves this quarter, our credit reserves of more than $ 30 billion continue to reflect significant short-term economic uncertainty and will allow us to bear a much worse economic environment than the current base forecasts of most economists, “CEO Jamie Dimon said in a statement.
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U.S. retail sales weakened for the second month in a row in December, the Commerce Department said Friday, when consumers pulled holiday spending amid job losses with increased pandemics.