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* Dow off 0.09%, S&P 500 up 0.36%, Nasdaq adds 0.68%
* Amazon rises as Bernstein says pandemic tailwind to
continue
* Tesla falls after warning of production challenges
* Real estate, consumer discretionary lead sectoral gains
(Updates to early afternoon)
By Shreyashi Sanyal and Devik Jain
Sept 22 (Reuters) - The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq rose on
Tuesday, led by a bounce in Amazon.com, while a likely delay in
the passage of new fiscal stimulus by Congress dampened hopes of
a faster economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and
kept the Dow subdued.
Amazon.com Inc AMZN.O jumped 4.0% after Bernstein upgraded
its stock to "outperform", saying the company will continue to
receive a boost from premium subscribers and third-party
merchants even beyond the pandemic. Microsoft Corp MSFT.O , Apple Inc AAPL.O , Alphabet Inc
GOOGL.O and Facebook Inc FB.O , which together fuelled a Wall
Street rally since a coronavirus-driven crash in March, rose
between 0.3% and 2%.
"The market is looking for some stability. Once again
investors and traders are going to look to names that had gotten
unduly beaten up," said Kenny Polcari, managing partner at Kace
Capital Advisors in Boca Raton, Florida.
Seven of the 11 major S&P 500 indexes were trading higher,
with real estate .SPLRCR and consumer discretionary .SPLRCD
leading gains.
U.S. stocks started the week on the back foot as fears about
a new round of lockdowns in Europe and a stalemate in Congress
over the size and shape of another coronavirus-response bill
dented hopes of a swift economic recovery.
On Monday, the benchmark S&P 500 .SPX ended just under 9%
down from its record high on Sept. 2, floating above correction
territory.
Investors are now bracing for an extended period of market
volatility on concerns over growing political uncertainty in
Washington that have been sharpened by the death of Supreme
Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. "All the political energies are going to be directed towards
the next Supreme Court nomination. I don't see them paying
attention to that and pushing stimulus through at the same
time," said Mike Zigmont, head of trading and research at
Harvest Volatility Management in New York.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Tuesday told a
congressional panel that America's economy had shown "marked
improvement" since the coronavirus pandemic drove it into
recession, but the path ahead remains uncertain and the U.S.
central bank will do more if needed. Chicago Fed President Charles Evans also warned that the
U.S. economy risks a longer, slower recovery, if not another
outright recession, if Congress fails to pass a fiscal package.
At 12:34 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI
was down 24.28 points, or 0.09%, at 27,123.42, the S&P 500
.SPX was up 11.84 points, or 0.36%, at 3,292.90 and the Nasdaq
Composite .IXIC was up 73.13 points, or 0.68%, at 10,851.93.
Tesla Inc TSLA.O fell 5.1% after Chief Executive Officer
Elon Musk warned about the difficulties of speeding up
production as an expert cautioned the carmaker's increased
reliance on large-scale aluminium parts could bring new
manufacturing challenges.
Oracle Corp ORCL.N shed 1.8% on report that Beijing was
unlikely to approve a proposed deal by the software maker and
Walmart WMT.N for ByteDance's TikTok. Declining issues outnumbered advancers for a 1.14-to-1 ratio
on the NYSE and for a 1.50-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P index recorded one new 52-week high and no new low,
while the Nasdaq recorded 19 new highs and 41 new lows.