A worker wearing protective gears sprays disinfectant as a precaution against the coronavirus at a subway station in Seoul, South Korea. Photo Credit: Ahn Young-joon/AP/Shutterstock
DAMIAN J. TROISE AP Business Writer
U.S. stocks fell in early trading Friday as cases of the new virus swelled in South Korea and more companies warned investors about a hit to their profits and revenue.
Renewed anxiety over the global spread of the virus also pushed stocks lower on Thursday and knocked them off of record highs in what has been a volatile, holiday-shortened week. Indexes are on track for their first weekly loss after two weeks of gains.
Technology companies led the losses. Chipmakers, which rely heavily on China for both sales and supply chains, were some of the worst-hit. Nvidia fell 1.7 percent.
Companies that depend on consumer spending, especially in travel-related industries, also fell broadly. Marriott shed 2.4 percent and Carnival fell 1.6 percent. American Airlines slipped 3.3 percent.
Investors headed for safer territory. Real estate companies and utilities held up better than the rest of the market. Bond prices rose and pushed yields lower. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 1.47 percent from 1.52 percent late Thursday.
The price of gold, another haven for nervous investors, jumped 1.4 percent.
KEEPING SCORE: The S&P 500 index fell 0.9 percent as of 10:10 a.m. Eastern time. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 268 points, or 0.9 percent, to 28,949. The Nasdaq fell 1.2 percent. The Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks fell 0.8 percent.
Asian and European markets also fell.
VIRUS WARNINGS: Coca-Cola is the latest big name to warn investors that the economic impact of the virus will hurt its finances. China is a big market for the company, and Coke now expects a hit of 2 cents per share to its first-quarter profit.
Universal Display, which makes LED-technology for televisions and other products, expects the virus to hurt orders in 2020. The International Air Transport Association said the virus threatens to erase $29 billion of this year’s revenue for global airlines, though mostly for Chinese carriers.
SPREADING ANXIETY: South Korea said 204 people have been infected with the virus, quadruple the number of cases it had two days earlier. More than 76,000 people have been infected globally, with most of the cases and deaths centered in China. That nation’s leadership on Friday shifted to a more cautious tone and said it has not yet reached a turning point for the virus and the situation in the hardest-hit province remains grave.
GOOD HARVEST: Deere jumped 9.1 percent after the farm equipment maker handily beat Wall Street’s fiscal first-quarter profit forecasts. The company is coming out of an extended period in which it was bruised by the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
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