US: Stocks end lower after ugly session

[NEW YORK] Wall Street stocks finished an ugly session solidly lower on Monday on rising worries about the latest Covid-19 strain while President Joe Biden's spending plans faced potentially fatal opposition.

Major US indices were in the red the entire day, finishing above their session lows but still decisively in the red as investors digested unfavorable news.

"It does not feel like the most wonderful time of the year for Wall Street," Oanda's Edward Moya said in a note.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended at 34,932.16, down 1.2 per cent or 433 points after earlier losing as much as 700 points during the session.

The broad-based S&P 500 shed 1.1 per cent to 4,568.02, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index fell 1.2 per cent to 14,980.94.

The losses came after US Senator Joe Manchin dealt what could be a fatal blow to Biden's US$1.75 trillion Build Back Better proposal when he announced on Sunday that he would not vote for it.

Meanwhile, surging case counts and the new Omicron variant of Covid-19 prompted some governments to enact fresh restrictions, while top US pandemic advisor Anthony Fauci warned that the latest strain would be "raging through the world" this winter.

Among individual companies, Cerner rose 0.8 per cent as it agreed to be acquired by Oracle for US$28.3 billion in a deal oriented around digital health services. The deal is Oracle's largest-ever acquisition.

Oracle dropped 5.1 per cent.

AFP