By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets fell at the opening on Tuesday, as a warning from Apple and disappointing figures from Walmart (NYSE:WMT) validated fears that stocks may have gotten ahead of themselves in pricing in a quick end to the Covid-19 outbreak.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock fell 2.7% after the iPhone maker warned of a two-fold hit to revenue, first from a drop in retail sales in China and secondly due to production constraints in its supply chain. It wasn’t able to give any clearer update on the expected impact of the virus, but warned it would not reach the $63 billion lower end of its guidance range.
Walmart (NYSE:WMT) stock, by contrast, recovered from early losses to be up 0.5% after missing expectations for fourth-quarter sales. While its guidance for 30% online sales growth also represented a slowdown from last year’s 37%, markets took the view that the possible leakage of business to Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) isn’t as bad as it might be.
By 9:55 AM ET (1455 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 113 points or 0.4% at 29,303. The S&P 500 index was down 0.2% and the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.1%.
Sentiment was supported somewhat by the release of the Empire State Manufacturing index, which rose by more than expected to its highest level since May last year.