NEW YORK (Reuters) – The S&P 500 lost ground on Tuesday over concerns about a new coronavirus variant and disappointing economic data that stole the thunder from the Washington crossing of a long-awaited pandemic bill.
The Dow also closed lower, while Apple Inc. helped push the Nasdaq technologically to a historic close.
Small caps have advanced, with Russell 2000 also closing at a record high.
“Today, the market is taking its toll,” said Ryan Detrick, senior market strategist at LPL Financial in Charlotte, North Carolina. “Digest the two big news stories we’ve received in the last 24 hours, the stimulus and the new COVID strain.”
Apple was an outlier amid broad sales, gaining 2.8% and offering the biggest rise for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq on news of the company’s plans to launch an electric passenger vehicle by 2024.
Overnight, Congress adopted a $ 892 billion pandemic aid package, months after a partisan warfare, aimed at supporting an economic recovery that is faltering under restrictions on coronavirus renewal.
The resurgence continues to grow, infecting 214,000 Americans every day, causing mandatory shutdowns and pushing hospitals to capacity.
A new variant of the rapid spread of the virus discovered in the UK stopped the movement in and out of the UK and sent vaccine manufacturers Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc struggling to ensure that their medicines were effective against it.
Coronavirus fears and optimism about a possible economic recovery led to extreme volatility on Wall Street in 2020, with the S&P 500 recording daily gains or losses of 2% or more than 40 times a year so far. in over a decade.
“This will be the first year in history, when stocks fell 30 percent for that year at some point and ended in the green,” Detrick said. “It’s really an amazing round trip and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Economically, consumer confidence fell unexpectedly, while sales of second-hand American homes saw their first decline in six months.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 200.94 points, or 0.67%, to 30,015.51, the S&P 500 lost 7.66 points, or 0.21%, to 3,687.26, and Nasdaq Composite added 65.40 points, or 0.51%, at 12,807.92.
Of the 11 major sectors in the S&P 500, only technology and real estate ended the session on positive territory.
Tesla Inc. was down 1.5%, expanding its slide the next day as part of the S&P 500.
Peloton Interactive Inc. rose 11.6% as brokers raised their stock price targets following the company’s announcement that it would buy Precor peer in a $ 420 million deal.
Amgen Inc. fell 2.8% after disappointing results in a late-term study of an asthma drug, developed in partnership with UK drug maker AstraZeneca Plc.
Decreasing issues outnumbered those in advance on the NYSE by a ratio of 1.31 to 1; on the Nasdaq, a 1.21-to-1 ratio favored the forwards.
The S&P 500 recorded 23 new 52-week highs and a new low; Nasdaq Composite recorded 323 new highs and 11 new lows.
The volume of US stock markets was 11.02 billion shares, compared to the average of 11.62 billion in the last 20 trading days.
Stephen Culp’s report; Additional reporting by Noel Randewich; Montage by Cynthia Osterman