The darling stocks of the pandemic have crashed back to earth while travel and live event stocks soar, as life returns to something approaching normal.
With vaccines widely available, shares of Peloton have plunged 65 percent this year, and Zoom is down 26 percent, while airlines, hotels and other sectors battered in the pandemic are thriving.
'The markets clearly sense the pandemic is over,' Ben Emons, managing director of global macro strategy for Medley Global Advisors, told the New York Times. 'We're in a full reopening, and we're moving toward a normalized situation.'
The market's assessment comes despite that fact that daily news COVID-19 cases and deaths have leveled off at a fairly high rate nationwide, and are sharply increasing in some states, such as Michigan and Minnesota.
View of the crowd during the 2021 Global Citizen Live festival at the Great Lawn, Central Park on September 25. With reopening, travel and live events stocks are surging
Likely, investors believe that there is little political will for further lockdowns, in particular given the availability of vaccines, and now booster shots, easing the concerns of those most fearful of the virus.
Perhaps no stock was as emblematic of the pandemic as video-calling app Zoom, which overnight became the daily tool of office workers around the world as they worked from home.
Shares of Zoom rose more than 730 percent during their peak last year, but have since plunged precipitously as workers trickled back into offices, and 'Zoom fatigue' became a byword for exhaustion with webcam meetings.
Peloton, the maker of the high-priced connected exercise bike, also saw shares soar last year as gyms and exercise classes closed, sparking a fad for the company's products.
Shares of Peloton rose as much as 440 percent last year, but so far in 2021 have plunged 65 percent, after the company this month slashed its annual revenue projection by as much as $1 billion.
Peloton has also been battered by a recall on its treadmills, after one child was killed and 29 were injured when they were pulled under the moving belt.
After rising more than 400 percent during the height of the pandemic in 2020, Peloton's stock is now down more than 60 percent so far in 2021
A year-to-date view of Peloton stock shows how the share price has plunged
But the company has also clearly suffered under reopening measures, and some analysts even called Peloton's share price plunge the official signal of the end
