Wall Street Opens Lower as Today’s Lockdowns Overshadow Tomorrow’s Cures

U.S. stock markets opened modestly lower on Tuesday, paring premarket losses after the Food and Drug Administration indicated it was ready to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for emergency use later this week.

Prior to the release of the FDA’s analysis of data from the two companies’ stage three trial of their Covid-19 vaccine, markets had been indicated down by more, a response to fresh evidence that the pandemic is effectively still running out of control in much of the U.S.

By 9:45 AM ET (1545 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 20 points, or 0.1% at 30,049, while the S&P 500 was down 0.3% and the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.4%.