NEW YORK, July 9 — Wall Street stocks rose early today, reversing the prior session’s sell-off as markets monitored the latest headlines on the Delta variant of the coronavirus.
Governments across Asia were imposing new restrictions in response to Covid-19 outbreaks, with Thailand announcing a seven-hour night curfew across the capital Bangkok and nine provinces and Sydney tightening a lockdown in Australia’s largest city. The latest Covid-19 trends have exacerbated uncertainty about the global economic recovery, leading to volatility in markets this week.The move was “aided by a sense that Treasuries have gotten overbought on a short-term basis,” said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O’Hare. The broad-based S&P 500 gained 0.7 per cent to 4,351.32, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 0.3 per cent to 14,597.11.
Among individual companies, Pfizer jumped 2.1 per cent after the company and BioNTech said they would seek authorisation for a third dose of their Covid-19 vaccine to boost its efficacy against variants of the virus. — AFP