By Kim Khan
Investing.com - Wall Street plunged into the red in early trading Monday as a spike in the number of Covid-19 virus cases confirmed outside of China pushed money out of riskier investments.
The Dow dove 905.27 points, or 3.12%, to 28,087.04 at 9:35 AM ET (14:35 GMT) and the S&P 500 fell 93.63, or 2.8%, to 3,245.62. The Nasdaq Composite plunged 341.72, or 3.6%, 9,234.87, with tech stocks particularly hard hit.
The U.S. Treasury yield curve inverted the most since October and the 10-Year yield fell below 1.37%. Its all-time low is 1.32% hit in 2016 after the Brexit vote.
Worries snowballed over the weekend as the numbers of cases of Covid-19 jumped in Italy, South Korea and Iran. Authorities in Italy imposed a quarantine in the north of the country and its benchmark MIB index tumbled nearly 6%.
Among individual stocks, Dow component Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) sank 6% after the latest data showed shipments of mobile phones in China dove 36.6% in January from the year-ago period.
High-flying Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), which has a factory in Shanghai, was also hit on virus worries, with shares dropping 8.6%.
Chip stocks were also hard hit. Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) lost 10.2%, Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) tumbled 8.4% and Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) slumped 7.4%.