By Yasin Ebrahim
Investing.com – The Dow clawed back its losses on Wednesday, following a sharp sell-off a day earlier, with health-care issues leading the charge after former Vice President Joe Biden racked up major victories on Super Tuesday.
The S&P 500 surged 2.73%, Nasdaq Composite climbed 2.80% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 2.82%.
Health-care stocks have underperformed the broader market recently on fears a Bernie Sanders' victory could usher in major disruptions for the industry, with the socialist democratic keen to pursue a "Medicare for All" policy, which would scrap private health insurance.
But those fears eased somewhat after Joe Biden won nine of the 14 states that voted to pick a Democratic White House candidate on Super Tuesday, setting up a close race for the Democratic nomination against rival Sanders.
Anthem (NYSE:ANTM) rose 15%, Centrene was up 14%, Humana (NYSE:HUM) and Cigna (NYSE:CI) were up more than 10%.
Despite the rally, investors were also monitoring the impact of the coronavirus as infections in the U.S continued to mount.
Officials in Los Angeles reported six new COVID-19 cases in the county over the last 48 hours, prompting them to declare a local emergency, taking the total number of cases in the U.S. to 130 and the death toll to nine.