Why Shares of Southwest Airline Are Falling Today
Shares of domestic-focused Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) so far in 2020 had held up better than shares of the company's more international-dependent rivals, with the stock up more than 5% for the year heading into this week's trading compared to the NYSE Arca Airline Index's 5% decline. That all changed on Monday as Southwest shares fell 5% on word the coronavirus is expanding rapidly around the globe.
Southwest shares joined in a broader market sell-off after reports of widespread coronavirus cases in Italy and South Korea.
Airline stocks are a logical target for investors looking to reduce risk, and indeed airline shares were hard hit in January as the coronavirus outbreak originally worsened. But the conventional wisdom then was the coronavirus was a problem mainly in China or, at most, Asia, and carriers like Southwest that only fly domestically and to the Caribbean were not caught up in the initial sell-off.
Source Fool.com
