HONG KONG / NEW YORK (Reuters) – Asian shares slipped on Tuesday, extending a pullback from multi-year highs hit last week over renewed fears that a new infectious strain of COVID-19 could close much of Britain’s global slowdown in economic recovery.
The loss of S&P / ASX 200 in Australia widened by 0.67%. Nikkei 225 slipped from Japan by 0.85%.
MSCI’s share of Asia Pacific stock outside Japan fell 0.21%. China CSI300 Index and Hang Seng Index opened down 0.2%.
“Increased European COVID-19 restrictions should be in response to fears of a new variant, which is expected to spread faster, and which could, as expected, be adversely affected by prices through The impact of near-term global growth, ”said Stephen Innes, Axi’s Chief Global Marketing Engineer.
“Illegal situations continue through the end of the year, but dips like this could give them more of a chance to go down than anything else,” he said.
Countries around the world closed their borders to Britain on Monday due to fears of a new strain of coronavirus, which is said to be up to 70% more portable than the original ones, causing travel and building disorders food shortages are expected days before Britain is forced to leave the European Union.
When the new strain was discovered, just months before vaccines were expected to become widely available, it renewed fears about the virus, which has killed an estimated 1.7 million people worldwide. As a result European shares fell Monday in their worst session in nearly two months.
Oil prices fell in anticipation of lower demand, with U.S. crude recently down 0.33% at $ 47.81 per barrel, while Brent was 0.2% lower at $ 50.81.
U.S. stocks halted many of their losses early in Monday’s volatile session in hopes of a long-awaited stimulus package agreed with transportation leaders encouraging a stronger recovery.
The S&P 500 finished the day down 0.39% at 3,694.92.
Volatility in U.S. proportions jumped in shallow holiday trading. The Wall Street Cboe Volatility Index, known as the “fear measure”, marked its biggest one-day gain since late October, even though it finished well off the high session.
Spot gold rose 0.3% to $ 1,881.7 an ounce, with safe havens hitting a one-month high earlier in the session.
Reporting with John McCrank in New York and Kane Wu in Hong Kong; Edited by Sam Holmes