The world's stock markets plunged alongside oil prices and U.S. Treasury yields on Friday after South Africa raised the alarm over a fast-spreading strain of the coronavirus, sparking concerns that travel restrictions and other curbs will threaten global economic recovery. The World Health Organization called the new Omicron strain a "variant of concern" that could be more transmissible than other strains of the virus.
The Dow Jones average fell more than 900 points, or 2.5%, for its worst day of the year, while the S&P 500 slumped 2.3% and the Nasdaq Composite slid 2.2%.
The best performers of the week included so called “stay-at-home” companies, which performed well during the earlier months of the pandemic, such as Zoom (+5.72%), Peloton (+5.67%), and Moderna (+20.57%). At the same time, travel-related stocks including airlines and cruise lines were hit hard, while banking shares slipped on increased worries that global economic slowdown would result in lower rates, hurting their profitability. Indeed, bond yields fell in a flight to safety, with the benchmark 10-year yield tumbling 12 basis points to 1.52%, while U.S. crude oil prices collapsed by more than 10% to break below $70 per barrel.
Top news from last week:
- Metaverse - a Trillion-Dollar Market Opportunity: Metaverse, metaverse, metaverse. The word seems to be what all investors are talking about lately, spurred on by Facebook's recent name change to Meta Platforms. The metaverse may represent an over $1 trillion annual revenue market opportunity, crypto investment giant Grayscale said in a report recently. if the metaverse is as transformational as experts from Grayscale or Facebook expect, then it might be great opportunity for investors. Here are some of the stocks that are expected to benefit from the growth and adoption of metaverse: Meta Platforms (FB), Roblox Corp (RBLX), Snap Inc (SNAP), Matterport Inc (MTTR), NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA), and Match Group Inc (MTCH). There is also a newly created Roundhill Ball Metaverse ETF (META) that has around 40 holdings with exposure to the Metaverse.
- E-commerce sales in the US during the holiday season are expected to top $200 billion: Adobe Analytics forecasts Black Friday e-commerce sales between $8.8 billion and $9.6 billion, though the group says the pull of major shopping days is starting to fall. Shoppers spent $5.1 billion on Thanksgiving Day, the low end of the expected range of $5.1 billion to $5.4 billion. Still, shoppers spent an average of $3.5 million per minute. Online spending during the holiday season is on track to top $200 billion for the first time according to data from Adobe Analytics, which tracks consumer sales on retailers’ websites. Companies that might benefit from the rise in e-commerce sales include Shopify Inc. (SHOP), Amazon Inc. (AMZN), Walmart Inc. (WMT), eBay Inc. (EBAY) and Etsy Inc (ETSY).
- Baidu’s Robotaxi Approved in Beijing: Baidu (BIDU) and self-driving startup Pony.ai can proceed and launch paid driverless robotaxi services in Beijing according to a report published by Reuters. The approval paves the way for Baidu’s first commercial deployment of the Apollo Global service on open roads. In May, Baidu launched the driverless robotaxi service in a much smaller 2.7 kilometers area in Shougang Park, Beijing. Following the approval for commercial deployment, the company intends to launch the service in 65 cities by 2025 and 100 cities by 2030. Out of 14 analysts covering BIDU 13 have a buy rating and the average price target for the stock for the next 12 months is $245.23 which represents more than 60% upside.
Earnings This week:
Earnings next week will be light, but there are still some high-profile reports to watch.
Tuesday, November 30: GlobalFoundries (GFS), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), NetApp (NTAP), and Salesforce.com (CRM).
Wednesday, December 1: CrowdStrike Holdings (CRWD), Okta (OKTA), Snowflake (SNOW), and Splunk (SPLK).
Thursday, December 2: DocuSign (DOCU), Dollar General (DG), Kroger (KR), Marvell Technology (MRVL) and Asana (ASAN).
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