The five most valuable US companies by market capitalisation have altogether lost more than $238 billion in value as part of a market plunge, due to news of coronavirus spreading rapidly outside China. The big five are Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet (Google’s parent company).
The coronavirus has spread to countries such as South Korea, Iran, and Italy. These five tech companies make almost one-fifth of the value of the S&P 500.
U.S. stocks on Monday plummeted after South Korea raised its coronavirus alert to the “highest level”. The coronavirus has infected about 80,000 people all over the world, although most of these cases are in China.
Apple is perhaps more at risk due to its heavy reliance on Chinese manufacturing plants for its products. Its sales in China are also affected. The company already warned its investors that the impact of the disease would hurt its revenue.
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The other companies have a smaller presence in China. Google and Facebook have no presence in China entirely however, they lost value due to broader fears of the outbreak’s effect on the global economy.
“The spike in infections in South Korea, mostly concentrated in the congregation of a single church, a surge in cases in Italy, and news of an outbreak in Iran, where the health care system is of uncertain quality and the government is secretive, has triggered fears that China’s aggressive quarantining efforts won’t keep the virus from spreading globally,” according to Ian Shepherdson, a chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.
Microsoft fell more than 3%. Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet, and Apple all closed at least 1.5% lower as 21st February 2020.
Italy’s stock exchange, the Borsa Italiana, lost 6%, its worst day in almost four years, the S&P 500 lost 3.35%, NASDAQ lost 3.71% and The Dow Jones Industrial lost 3.57%.
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