US: Stocks lower after holiday weekend

[NEW YORK] Wall Street stocks were lower early on Tuesday to open a holiday-shortened week as markets weighed the economic effects of the latest Covid-19 cases.

Worries about the Delta variant of the coronavirus have garnered much attention, but investors also took note of strong North American movie box office performance over the Labour Day Weekend.

Disney's Shang-Chi And the Legend Of The Ten Rings took in US$71.4 million over the Friday-through-Sunday period, a record for the Labour Day Weekend.

About 20 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.5 per cent at 35,181.53.

The broad-based S&P 500 shed 0.3 per cent to 4,519.90, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index slipped less than 0.1 per cent to 15,358.97.

September is traditionally one of the weakest months of the year for stock market performance.

The strong movie-ticket sales came after Friday's disappointing US jobs data: The US economy was reported to have added just 235,000 positions last month.

FHN Financial's Chris Low said: "It is tempting to blame the Delta variant and rising Covid case rates for the job-market slowdown, except that people are not really behaving as if they are particularly concerned."

Markets are also monitoring for impacts from the expiration of federal aid programmes for workers unemployed due to Covid-19. The programmes expired on Sept 6.

AFP