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Stocks reversed course on Monday, closing lower as a rally in major tech names — which briefly pushed the S&P 500 into positive territory for the year — fizzled out.
The Dow Jones Industrials fell sharply from its highs of the day, but finished Monday ahead 10.5 points to 26,085.80. The 30-stock average had rallied as much as 563.79 points, or 2.2%.
The S&P 500 let go of its gains and stumbled 29.82 points to 3,155.22
The tech-heavy NASDAQ wilted 226.60 points, or 2.1%, to 10,390.84.
Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Alphabet all closed at least 1.7% lower. Apple fell 0.5% and Microsoft lost 3.1%. Earlier in the day, these stocks were broadly higher. These names are some of the market stalwarts this year, as investors keep betting they will perform well during the pandemic.
Tesla rallied as much as 16.2%, but closed 3.1% lower.
Corporate profits are expected to fall by 44% in the second quarter, which would be the biggest drop in quarterly earnings since the fourth quarter of 2008. However, the market could shrug off the sharp profit decline as long as companies signal a recovery on the horizon.
Pfizer and German biotech BioNTech SE were granted fast track designation by the Food and Drug Administration for two of the companies’ four vaccine candidates against the coronavirus. BioNTech jumped 11%. Pfizer gained 4.1%.
Pfizer and BioNTech said they expect to start the next phase of the vaccine trial later this month with 30,000 subjects. The companies expect to have 100 million doses of a vaccine by the end of 2020 and more than 1.2 billion doses by the end of 2021.
Florida reported 15,299 new coronavirus cases on Sunday, the highest single day total for any U.S. state since the pandemic began.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has reported more than 60,000 new cases daily for three days in a row now, bringing the national total to more than three million cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Prices for the 10-Year Treasury regained lost ground, lowering yields to 0.63% from Friday’s 0.64%. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.
Oil prices dipped 94 cents to $39.61 U.S. a barrel.
Gold prices added $2.20 to $1,804.10 U.S. an ounce.
