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The spread of the new variant of the coronavirus in the United Kingdom closes parts of London, families in the city center have to celebrate Christmas with only members of the household and borders are closed again. It gave new uncertainty and a recession in the stock markets on Monday, where the Main Index of the Oslo Stock Exchange ended the day with a wide fall, where the main index closed with a fall of almost 2.5 percent.
– This mutation gives a new fear of harder closures and that it will be more difficult to get rid of the virus. Normally, the agreement on a US support package would have given a boost, and we saw future indices on US stock exchanges point higher first. But the congressional deal has probably been included in the market price for a while, says Wealth Management chief strategist at Nordea, Erik Bruce.
– Liquidity expires before Christmas
Manager Kristian Tunaal at Alfred Berg absolutely believes there is cause for concern.
– If you look at the consequences of what the virus has done, then yes. If there is a new form of virus, the worst case scenario is that the vaccines that have been developed must be adjusted and modified. We breathed a bit of relief when vaccines came on the scene, and if there is a new type of virus, we may have to wait a little longer, says Tunaal, who believes the market has learned to live with the virus for a mutation to be manageable.
– How do you position yourself compared to the current year?
– We do little at the end of the year. We have the positions that we want to have that are relatively strong in our opinion, he says.
The most important positions in the fund he manages, Nordic Gambak, are the forestry and garden equipment company Husqvarna, the games company Evolution Gaming and the Holmen forestry group.
– So we must remember that we have little data to relate to about this new mutation of the virus. Our attitude is that making urgent decisions based on scarce data is a bad methodology. We’ll probably see it before we make any significant changes, says Tunaal.
– Liquidity runs out before Christmas and that also means that it is difficult to do something now, he says.
– Logical
Storebrand manager Hans Thrane Nielsen says both macroeconomic figures have been better than expected in the last six months. Quarterly figures for the third quarter have also been better than consensus. In addition, new vaccines and extensive stimuli have been received from central banks and authorities.
– Most stock investors have probably accepted that the stock price is based on 2021 earnings, he says.
– When the market receives virus news that 2021 is not in the box, then it probably makes sense for the stock market to take a small step back from the all-time high, says Thrane Nielsen.
Most shares fell on the Oslo Stock Exchange, with oil-related companies falling the most after the price of oil weakened on concerns about a shutdown and further weakening in oil demand. .
Oil companies Equinor and Aker BP ended the day down more than five percent, while the price of oil fell four percent.
– If it remains in some European countries, it will not have a great effect on oil demand, but if the virus with the indicated rate of infectivity spreads more, then the risk of a broader global lockdown increases. It will be extremely difficult because Opec + has facilitated production cuts and is in the way of freeing up more production. It’s probably a long way off being forced to make deeper cuts again, says oil analyst Helge André Martinsen of DNB Markets.
He says that it must be taken into account that the price of oil is at $ 49 a barrel, while last October it was below $ 40 a barrel. In other words, the price of oil is still well above the level it was less than two months ago.
– What we must remember is that the rebound in oil prices has occurred despite the fact that fundamentals seem a bit weaker. Demand in Europe has weakened, while production in Libya has returned. It’s been a very vaccine-driven rally and if you start pushing those conditions you can get a significant correction, he says.(Terms)Copyright Dagens Næringsliv AS and / or our suppliers. We would like you to share our cases via a link, which leads directly to our pages. Copying or other use of all or part of the content can only be done with written permission or as permitted by law. For more terms, see here.