US STOCKS-S&P 500 ends lower as new COVID storm clouds overshadow stimulus passage

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By Stephen Culp
NEW YORK, Dec 22 (Reuters) - The S&P 500 lost ground at the
end of a whipsaw session on Tuesday as concerns over a new
variant of the coronavirus and disappointing economic data stole
the thunder from Washington's passage of a long-awaited pandemic
relief bill.
The Dow also closed lower, while Apple Inc AAPL.O helped
fuel the tech-heavy Nasdaq's advance.
"Today the market is catching its breath," said Ryan
Detrick, senior market strategist at LPL Financial in Charlotte,
North Carolina. "It's digesting the two big pieces of news we've
gotten in the last 24 hours, the stimulus and the new COVID
strain."
Still, this is typically a seasonally bullish time of year,
Detrick added, saying "the market doesn't care about the past or
present. The market only cares about the future."
Apple was an outlier amid a broad sell-off, its stock
jumping on news of the company's plans to roll out an electric
passenger vehicle by 2024.
Overnight, Congress passed a pandemic relief package worth
$892 billion after months of a partisan tug-of-war, aimed at
propping up an economic recovery faltering under the weight of
restrictions aimed at containing a coronavirus resurgence.
That resurgence continues to swell, infecting 214,000
Americans every day, prompting mandatory shutdowns and pushing
hospitals to capacity. A fast-spreading new variant of the virus discovered in
Britain has brought movement in and out of the UK to a halt and
sent vaccine makers Pfizer Inc PFE.N and Moderna Inc MRNA.O
scrambling to ensure their drugs were effective against it.
Fears of the coronavirus and optimism about an eventual
economic recovery made for extreme volatility on Wall Street in
2020, with the S&P 500 logging daily gains or losses of 2% or
more over 40 times in the year so far, the most in over a
decade.
"This will be the first year in history when stocks were off
30% for the year at one point and finished in the green,"
Detrick said. "It's truly an amazing round-trip and we've never
seen anything like it."
On the economic front, consumer confidence unexpectedly
dropped while sales of pre-owned U.S. homes posted their first
decline in six months.
Unofficially, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell
202.12 points, or 0.67%, to 30,014.33, the S&P 500 .SPX lost
7.67 points, or 0.21%, to 3,687.25 and the Nasdaq Composite
.IXIC added 65.40 points, or 0.51%, to 12,807.92.
Tesla Inc TSLA.O closed lower, extending its slide on its
second day as a S&P 500 constituent. Peloton Interactive Inc PTON.O jumped as brokers hiked
their price targets on the stock on the heels of the company's
announcement that it would buy peer Precor in a deal worth $420
million. Amgen Inc AMGN.O slid after disappointing results from a
late-stage study of an asthma drug developed in a partnership
with British drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc AZN.L . <^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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