Covid-19 Fears Spark Early Wall Street Sell-Off; Dow Down 450 Pts By Investing.com – Investing.com

Covid-19 Fears Spark Early Wall Street Sell-Off; Dow Down 450 Pts By Investing.com – Investing.com

By Geoffrey Smith 

Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets fell sharply at the open on Monday, as a surge in Covid-19 cases across the U.S. and further afield drove a wave of risk aversion that hit most asset classes. 

By 9:40 AM ET (1340 GMT), the was down 458 points, or 1.3%, at 34,229 points. The and the were both down 1.2%, pulling away sharply from the record highs they had hit last week.

The move came after a weekend of ill-tempered exchanges between the Biden administration and social media giants, which illustrated the mounting concern in Washington about the spread of the Delta variant of Covid-19, which is more than twice as contagious as earlier strains of the virus. Infection rates are rising particularly strongly in the South and Midwest, where skepticism toward vaccines - and to most policies advanced by the Democratic administration - is highest.