With multinational pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson revealing its latest coronavirus vaccine data, U.S. stock indexes fell while going into the weekend. According to its latest report, Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine candidate has proven to be 72% effective in the United States and 66% on a global scale.
These results pale in comparison to the vaccines developed by competitors Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE and Moderna Inc, both of whom were able to make their vaccines approximately 95% effective during clinical trials when two doses were administered. Johnson & Johnson stocks fell by 3.9% following this announcement.
Sam Stovall, the chief investment strategist at CFRA Research, explained that while it is good to have another vaccine supplier enter the market, the effectiveness of the vaccine candidate itself is of vital importance. Because its effectiveness is significantly lower than that of the frontrunners, so too is consumer confidence.
There were also widespread concerns regarding the GameStop shares surge during the past week. With numerous investors expressing nervousness regarding this situation, many found themselves selling stocks in major companies such as Apple Inc. This tech giant, along with the likes of Amazon.com Inc, Facebook Inc, Microsoft Corp, Netflix Inc, and Tesla Inc all incurred declines between 0.8% and 3.2% each.
