During Thursday evening Swedish time, USA's central bank chief Jerome Powell signaled that it would be wise to exercise caution when considering further lowering the interest rate.
This caused the already shaky mood on Wall Street to plummet even further – and the trend persisted all the way to the close on Friday, more than 24 hours later.
By then, the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index had fallen 2.2 percent, the broad S&P 500 index 1.3 percent, and the Dow Jones industrial index 0.7 percent.
On Thursday, incoming President Donald Trump also nominated vaccine critic Robert F Kennedy junior to the post of Minister of Health.
The following day, pharmaceutical companies such as Moderna, Pfizer, and Amgen had a very tough time on the stock exchange, with falls of 7.3 percent, 4.7 percent, and 4.2 percent, respectively.
Even tech stocks – in companies like Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, and Microsoft – performed poorly and fell heavily across the board.
Over the entire week, the Nasdaq composite index fell 3.1 percent, the S&P 500 lost 2.1 percent, and the Dow Jones industrial index dropped 1.2 percent.
