Companies benefiting from this year's economic reopening, including AMC Entertainment, United Airlines and Carnival Corp, were hammered on Friday by fears over a new and possibly-vaccine resistant coronavirus variant.
Trading before the bell showed U.S. stocks were set to join the selloff, with carriers United, Delta Air and American Airlines losing between 8per cent and 9per cent. Little is known of the variant but scientists say it has an unusual combination of mutations, may be able to evade immune responses and could be more transmissible.