By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets fell sharply at the open on Monday, as a surge in Covid-19 cases across the U.S. and further afield drove a wave of risk aversion that hit most asset classes.
By 9:40 AM ET (1340 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 458 points, or 1.3%, at 34,229 points. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite were both down 1.2%, pulling away sharply from the record highs they had hit last week.
The move came after a weekend of ill-tempered exchanges between the Biden administration and social media giants, which illustrated the mounting concern in Washington about the spread of the Delta variant of Covid-19, which is more than twice as contagious as earlier strains of the virus. Infection rates are rising particularly strongly in the South and Midwest, where skepticism toward vaccines - and to most policies advanced by the Democratic administration - is highest.
Oil stocks were among the biggest losers, as fears that the economic recovery will lose momentum and kill demand combined with news of an end to OPEC's internal quarrel over production quotas at the weekend, paving the way for some 2 million barrels a day of supply to be restored to world markets by the end of the year.