Stocks – Dow Opens up Over 200 Points, but Disney Lags

By Geoffrey Smith

Investing.com — U.S. stock markets staged a modest bounce at the opening of trade on Wednesday, after President Donald Trump lashed out at mainstream media for “panicking markets” with reports about the coronavirus.

By 9:35 AM ET (1435 GMT), the had risen 237 points or 0.9%, while the was up 1.0% and the was up 1.3%.

They’ve still all lost between 7% and 8% over the last week, however, as fears of the Covid-19 hurting economies outside China and the Far East have grown. Anecdotal evidence continued to show a gradual recovery in Chinese economic activity and a further slowdown in the incidence of new cases in the country on Wednesday.

Earlier, President Trump had tweeted that network news channels were “doing everything possible to make the Caronavirus look as bad as possible, including panicking markets.”

His comments came less than a day after the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the country’s lead scientific agency for fighting epidemics, said that Americans should prepare for the outbreak to spread to U.S. communities.

Trump said he would hold a press briefing on the subject at 6 PM ET in Washington.

Among individual stocks, Walt Disney (NYSE:) fell 1.1% after abruptly announcing on Tuesday evening that CEO Robert Iger will step down with immediate effect. His successor will be Bob Chapek, a long-serving company insider who currently runs the theme parks division.

Another decliner was Virgin Galactic, which fell 3.4% after reporting its net loss widened to $73 million in the fourth quarter from $46 million a year earlier.

Elsewhere, airline stocks stabilized at lower levels after sharp falls in the last couple of days. American Airlines (NASDAQ:), Delta (NYSE:) and United (NASDAQ:) rose by between 1.2% and 2.1%.

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