US Market tumbles on concerns over Omicron variant

The US stock market finished volatile session lower on Friday, 17 December 2021, extending the sharp losses in the previous session, on renewed concerns over the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant on the global economy.

The volatility on Wall Street came on a "quadruple witching" day, with stock options, index options, stock futures and index futures all expiring.

At the close of trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average index declined 532.20 points, or 1.48%, to 35,365.444. The S&P500 index dropped 48.03 points, or 1.03%, to 4,620.64. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index fell 10.75 points, or 0.07%, to 15,169.68. For the week, the Nasdaq plunged by 2.9%, while the Dow and the S&P 500 declined by 1.7% and 1.9%, respectively.

Total shares volume turnover on U.S. exchanges stood at 17.27 billion shares, up from yesterday's 10.09 billion shares. Declining stocks outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE exchange by 1958 to 1392 and 156 closed unchanged. In the NASDAQ, 2163 issues advanced, 2521 issues declined, and 230 issues unchanged.

All 11 major S&P 500 sector indexes fell, with bottom performing issues were financials (down 2.27%), energy (down 2.24%), industrials (down 1.7%), and consumer staples (down 1.7%).

Shares of Oracle fell after reports that the enterprise software maker is in talks to buy electronic medical records company Cerner in a deal that could be valued at $30 billion.

FedEx Corp shares closed higher after the delivery firm reinstated its original fiscal 2022 forecast on Thursday, even as persistent labor woes chipped away profits.

Among Indian ADR, HDFC Bank shed 2.67% to $63.39, WNS Holdings dropped 1.48% to $84.28, INFOSYS sank 0.29% to $24.04, and Dr Reddys Labs shed 2.23% to $60.45. ICICI Bank fell 2% to $18.81, and Tata Motors fell 4.2% to $30.31. Azure Power Global added 0.4% to $18.24 and Wipro added 2.27% to $9.01.

Powered by Capital Market - Live News