Morning Report 1 Feb 21: US sharemarkets fell by near 2% on Friday

Focus remained on a retail trading frenzy, with steep gains recorded for heavily shorted stocks, including GameStop and AMC Entertainment. Shares in GameStop rose 67.9% and AMC rose by 53.7%. But shares in heavyweight tech stocks fell with Apple down 3.7%. Shares in Johnson & Johnson fell 3.6% after releasing results of its Covid-19 vaccine. The Dow Jones index lost 621 points or 2.0%. The S&P 500 index lost 1.9% and the Nasdaq fell by 266.5 points or 2.0%. Over the week the Dow and the S&P500 fell by 3.3% and the Nasdaq lost 3.5%. For the month the Dow lost 2.0%; S&P 500 lost 1.1%; but the Nasdaq rose 1.4%.

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