U.S. and European stock futures and Asian shares fell Friday after President Donald Trump said he and first lady Melania Trump had tested positive for the new coronavirus. The future contracts for both the S&P 500 and the Dow briefly lost more than 2% but were down 1.5% as of 7:32 a.m. Eastern. Oil prices tumbled more than 3%.
Trump tweeted news of his test results just hours after the White House announced that senior aide Hope Hicks had come down with the virus after traveling with the president several times this week.
“There was a knee-jerk risk-off reaction given the level of uncertainty but ultimately the market reaction will depend on a few questions,” TD Securities analysts said in a research note.
The Nikkei 225 index shed strong early gains, losing 0.8% after the Tokyo Stock Exchange resumed trading following an all-day outage due to a technical failure. Australia’s benchmark S&P/ASX 200 slipped 1%, while shares in Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia also fell.
Beyond potential political developments, investors will be watching for job figures due out Friday.
Data released Thursday painted a mixed picture for the economy, with one report showing the number of workers filing for unemployment benefits last week fell to 837,000 from 873,000. That was less than economists expected, but incredibly high compared with before the pandemic.
