S&P 500 Reverses, Falls From Intraday High

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The S&P 500 reversed course in Tuesday afternoon trading, falling from the intraday record it set earlier in the day. Tech stocks dipped deeper into the red too, with Apple among the decliners as investors weighed concerns over the continued surge in global coronavirus cases.

The

S&P 500
was hovering near the break-even line at negative 0.1%. The

Nasdaq,
which slipped shortly after the open, fell further, down 0.5% in afternoon trading. Bucking the trend, the

Dow Jones Industrial Average
showed a gain of 96 points. The index was still off its high for the day.

The S&P 500 is stalling after an impressive rally. The index set its 69th record closing high of the year on Monday as it rose 1.4% to 4791. Tech giant

Apple

(ticker: AAPL) helped the index advance, rising 2.3% to its 24th record high of the year Monday. But the stock was down 0.3% Tuesday. Apple announced Monday the closure of its New York City stores to shoppers after a Covid-19 spike. 

A surge in the highly contagious Omicron variant of coronavirus has pushed global cases of the virus to a daily all-time high, according to data from Bloomberg and the New York Times. More than 281 million people worldwide have been infected with Covid-19 since the pandemic was declared in March 2020, while 5.4 million people have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday shortened the recommended isolation period for people with Covid-19 to five days from 10 if they are asymptomatic, followed by five days of wearing a mask around others.

Brian Vendig, president of MJP Wealth Advisors, a wealth-management firm based in Westport, Conn., said Monday’s gains on Wall Street suggest the market is “confident that we can overcome the near-term challenges from the Omicron variant.”

He said light trading volumes and retail investors could support stock-market gains through the last trading sessions of the year, the period between Christmas and New Year’s Day when Wall Street often gets a so-called Santa Claus rally.

Vendig said the market’s focus in 2021 largely will remain the same next year, with investors continuing to watch “the trajectory of the pandemic, supply-chain issues, inflation and how the Federal Reserve plans to shape policy.”

He doesn’t expect the stock market to perform next year as well as it did in 2021. The S&P 500 has risen 27.6% so far this year.

Here are the stocks making moves in Tuesday’s trading:

Airlines were some of the better performers on the S&P 500.

United Airlines Holdings

(UAL) and

American Airlines Group

(AAL) gained 1.6% — matching gains in

Boeing

(BA).

Moderna

(MRNA) shares slid 2.5% midday, erasing earlier gains and putting shares on track to post their sixth consecutive day of losses. Still, Moderna’s stock has lagged

Pfizer

‘s (PFE) as the latter has dominated the Covid vaccine market.

Novavax

(NVAX) shares advanced more than 1.4% following an 11% drop on Monday.

Coinbase Global

(COIN) shares slid 6.6%, following a 4.5% advance in Monday’s trading. The drop comes as cryptocurrencies retreat.

Bitcoin
was down by 4.4%, hovering around $49,000 early Tuesday.

Write to Joe Woelfel at joseph.woelfel@barrons.com