Stocks rally after coronavirus spurred sell-off

Stocks opened with solid gains Tuesday after coronavirus fears spurred Wall Street’s worst day of losses since January.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up more than 500 points at 10 a.m. Tuesday, a gain of 1.5 percent after closing Monday with a loss of 2.1 percent. The Nasdaq composite was up 0.7 percent and the S&P 500 was up 1.1 percent.

All three major indexes fell off Monday as concerns about the delta variant’s impact on the economic recovery from the onset of the pandemic rattled Wall Street. Shares of companies in the leisure, hospitality, energy, travel and financial sectors led Monday’s decline, which was buffered by gains for health care and consumer staples stocks.

But Tuesday saw broad gains across the stock market, led by IBM, Honeywell, American Express, Peloton and Moderna. 

“The ‘buy the dip’ mentality appears to remain in place. People, like sports teams, tend to keep running the play that’s been working, and lately it’s worked a lot. We’ll see if it picks up some momentum. But remember: past isn’t prologue, and complacency and trading are like oil and water,” wrote JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade, in a Tuesday analysis.

Updated at 10:30 a.m.