Stocks stage late-day comeback from coronavirus fears
Coronavirus fears resurfaced on Wall Street after the Center for Disease Control announced the first person-to-person transmission in the United States.
Even though a modest late-day rally turned things around for the Dow, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, market internals were still negative.
Travel stocks took a hit.
Shares of Carnival were down more than 3 percent, Norwegian fell 2 percent and Royal Caribbean was down as well after some 6,000 passengers aboard a Carnival cruise ship were not allowed to get off when it docked in Italy. Two passengers were being tested for the coronavirus.
Peter Cardillo is the chief market economist at Spartan Capital...
SOUNDBITE (ENGLISH): PETER CARDILLO, CHIEF MARKET ECONOMIST, SPARTAN CAPITAL, SAYING:
"Many businesses have been shut down and even some of the holiday has been extended and so it will have some sort of impact on the Chinese economy and that obviously is the fear factor that the global economy may be effected by this."
While there are worries about what the coronavirus could do to the global economy, there's new data on how the U.S. economy finished the year. Annual economic growth was the slowest in three years as business investment continued to struggle due to trade tensions. Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, rose 2.3 percent in 2019. That's the second year in a row the economy failed to meet the Trump Administration's 3 percent goal.
One of the big stock movers of the day: Facebook. Investors frowned one-day after the company posted a surge in quarterly expenses as it spends more to improve privacy. It also doesn't help that the world's leading social network saw its slowest-ever sales growth. Facebook shares - down 6 percent for the day.
