{"id":5260,"date":"2021-11-30T14:24:34","date_gmt":"2021-11-30T20:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.keystonefinancial.com\/?post_type=oi_article&p=5260"},"modified":"2021-11-30T14:24:36","modified_gmt":"2021-11-30T20:24:36","slug":"weekly-commentary-november-30-2021","status":"publish","type":"oi_article","link":"https:\/\/www.keystonefinancial.com\/articles\/weekly-commentary-november-30-2021","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Commentary | November 30, 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
COVID-19 strikes again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coronavirus cases have been on the rise in Europe, climbing from about 700,000 new cases a week in September to 2.6 million a week in November, reported Richard P\u00e9rez-Pe\u00f1a and Jason Horowitz of the New York Times. As Thanksgiving approached, there was concern that travel and togetherness could increase the number of cases in the United States, too, creating stress on already taxed healthcare systems. Jamie Smyth and Caitlin Gilbert of the Financial Times explained:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c\u2026what was expected to be a celebration has become fraught with danger in some Midwestern states, where vaccination rates are low and COVID-19 cases are rising rapidly after a summer lull\u2026Nationally, cases have increased by nearly 30 percent since the beginning of the month\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Financial markets took the fall surge in stride. They were less sanguine when news broke last week that a new variant of coronavirus, called \u201comicron,\u201d had been identified in South Africa and was spreading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Little is currently known about omicron. In Nature, Ewan Callaway reported the variant has a significant number of mutations, which is concerning. Scientists are tracking omicron\u2019s spread and working to \u201cunderstand the variant\u2019s properties, such as whether it can evade immune responses triggered by vaccines and whether it causes more or less severe disease than other variants do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Global stock indices and oil prices dropped sharply on Friday, which was a holiday-shortened trading day, reported Chris Prentice and Carolyn Cohn of Reuters. U.S. Treasury bonds rallied as bond prices were pushed higher by investors seeking lower-risk opportunities. FactSet reported:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c[The Standard & Poor\u2019s 500 Index] logged its worst day since late February and all major indices finished the week in negative territory. All sectors ended lower with moves highly influenced by today’s [COVID-19] variant concerns\u2026Healthcare held up best\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although it was overshadowed by news of a new coronavirus variant, the pace at which the Federal Reserve will tighten monetary policy (to keep inflation in check) also was on investors\u2019 minds last week. Reuters reported that strategists at Goldman Sachs expected the Fed to tighten faster than anticipated, suggesting that interest rates could move higher sooner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n