Casino Stocks Take Hits After Las Vegas MassacreMGM Shares Down The Most Following Tragedy |
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The horrific events this past weekend have had an impact on casino stocks.
Shares of MGM Resorts International, owner of the casino-hotel where the perpetrator of the Las Vegas massacre was positioned, were down more than six percent since the weekend as of Tuesday morning. The shooting, the deadliest of its kind in modern U.S. history, occurred next to the MGM-owned Mandalay Bay casino on the Strip.
Reports said that MGM put several of its casino in the vicinity on temporary lock-down.
Wynn Resorts’ stock price was down 1.2 percent Monday morning and hasn’t yet recovered.
Las Vegas Sands, which has casinos on the opposite end of the Strip where the shooting took place, saw its shares fall 1.8 percent in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, but they are now trading slightly higher than they were on Friday.
The shooting, which occurred around 10 p.m. local time Sunday, prompted the nearby McCarran International Airport to halt flights for several hours.
The shooting took place just a couple of days after some good news for Nevada’s gaming market. Regulators reported that August casino industry winnings of $989.9 million were up 15 percent year-over-year. The bump was thanks, in part, to the Mayweather-McGregor boxing match.
Whether the shooting will impact Las Vegas’ tourism (more than 40 million visitors annually) in the long-term remains to be seen, but for now casinos are seeing an effect.