Wall Street, consumer confidence tumble amid Omicron variant concerns

Stocks fell on Wall Street at the start of trading Tuesday, amid new details regarding the Omicron variant. Those details included comments from Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel, who told the Financial Times he expected current vaccines would struggle with the variant.

“There is no world, I think, where [the effectiveness] is the same level . . . we had with [the] Delta [variant],” Bancel said, according to the Financial Times article. “I think it’s going to be a material drop. I just don’t know how much because we need to wait for the data. But all the scientists I’ve talked to . . . are like, ‘This is not going to be good.’”

As of 10:28 a.m. EST, The S&P 500 fell 0.5%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 287 points or 0.8%. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell from 1.52% to 1.42% late Monday as investors sought to reduce their exposure to risk. Financial companies took the brunt of this move, with the Bank of America falling 1.8% and Discover Financial Services falling 2.9%.

Even shares of Moderna fell 5.3% following Bancel’s comment. The CEO for Regeneron, which has an antibody treatment to COVID-19, shared similar concerns regarding the effectiveness of their treatments.

“We think we’re going to be in this for a long long time,” Dr. Leonard Schleifler told CNBC. “Just like vaccines are going to have to adapt, we’re probably going to constantly have to adapt our monoclonals.”

The Omicron variant’s affect on Wall Street may be another factor in a recent decline in consumer confidence in the United States. According to The Conference Board’s latest Consumer Confidence Survey, confidence fell to a nine-month low in November.

“Expectations about short-term growth prospects ticked up, but job and income prospects ticked down,” The Conference Board said Tuesday. “Concerns about rising prices—and, to a lesser degree, the Delta variant—were the primary drivers of the slight decline in confidence. Meanwhile, the proportion of consumers planning to purchase homes, automobiles, and major appliances over the next six months decreased.”

It’s important to note “the cutoff date for the preliminary results was November 19, before recent news of the Omicron COVID-19 variant,” The Conference Board said.