US Stocks Fall As Virus Fears Hit Travel Shares

Wall Street stocks retreated from records Tuesday, with tourism stocks falling due to worries about a new virus from China, and Boeing shares hammered by the latest 737 MAX delay

New York, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Jan, 2020 ) :Wall Street stocks retreated from records Tuesday, with tourism stocks falling due to worries about a new virus from China, and Boeing shares hammered by the latest 737 MAX delay.

Asian countries on Tuesday ramped up measures to block the spread of the new virus as the death toll in China rose to six, while US authorities confirmed the first case on American soil.

Boeing was the biggest loser in the Dow, dropping 3.4 percent after it announced it now does not expect the 737 MAX to return to the skies until mid-2020, later than some analysts expected. The news halted trading in Boeing shares for a time, but it ended off the low point.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the session at 29,196.04, a loss of 0.5 percent.

The broad-based S&P 500 shed 0.3 percent to finish at 3,320.79, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index lost 0.

2 percent at 9,370.81.

Major US indices finished last week at all-time highs following the signing of a partial US-China trade agreement.

But stocks spent much of Tuesday in the red in the first session of the week following Monday's Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

The International Monetary Fund announced Monday it had cut the latest global growth estimate for 2020 to 3.3 percent, 0.1 percentage point lower than in the prior report released in October, noting an improvement in the US-China trade picture but pointing to weakness in India.

Besides Boeing, other weak companies included American Airlines, down 4.2 percent, the travel service company Booking Holding, down 3.1 percent and Wynn Resorts, down 6.1 percent.

Corporate earnings take center stage during the holiday-shortened week, with reports from American Airlines, Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble due out, among others.