By Yasin Ebrahim

Investing.com – The S&P 500 turned negative Wednesday, as investor sentiment was soured by fresh fears about the Omicron coronavirus variant after the U.S. reported its first case of the new strain. 

It fell by 0.26% and was more than 1 point higher intraday. It fell by 0.43% or 148 points and Nasdaq lost 1.1%.

Officials from the U.S. Health Department confirmed Wednesday that California was the site of the first known case of Omicron-Covid-19. This news caused a lot of anxiety, as the so-called fear indicator turned positive. It triggered selling on the wider market, and countered positive data from the labor market.  

Although it was lower than October’s 570,000, November saw a 534,000 increase, still well above expectations.

This data, which is better than expected for jobs data, comes days before the nonfarm payrolls monthly due Friday. It raises expectations that the Federal Reserve will increase the rate of bond tapering.

Jerome Powell, Fed Chair, reiterated that accelerating the withdrawal of bonds purchases will be on the December meeting’s agenda. However, he added that there is no reason to make markets more unstable by a faster taper.

Despite the improvement in the overall market, investors still seem to be cautious as utilities, which are typically defensive corners of the market led the upward move.

AES Corporation (NYSE) Alliant Energy WEC Energy and (NASDAQ:) were some of the largest gainers.

Another boost for utilities which serve as a bond proxy was that treasury yields lost some gains after their intraday surge. The 10-year U.S Treasury yields fell further below 1.5%.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ :), a pharmaceutical company that reported an encouraging update on its middle-stage focal glomerular disorder study, helped push health care stock prices higher.

Moderna (NASDAQ:), meanwhile, slumped more than 11% after losing an appeal against a court ruling on patents – used in the making of its Covid-19 vaccine – held by Arbutus Biopharma (NASDAQ:). Arbutus jumped 36% but was still well above its session highs. 

In energy, Exxon Mobil The NYSE: was the focus of attention after an oil major predicted a doubling earnings and cashflow by 2027. This is in addition to plans for lower capital expenditure.

In tech, Apple (NASDAQ:) erased its intraday gains as the broader market reversed. Apple (NASDAQ:) was more than 1% higher intraday after Wall Street noted improving signs that supply chain pressures are improving, which could be a factor in the launch of its latest iPhone line.

UBS predicts Apple will sell 80 million iPhones this December, as a result of the improved wait time for iPhones. This is compared to 82 million iPhones last year.

Twitter (NYSE): meanwhile fell over 2%, even though Cathie Wood announced that ARK had purchased 1.1million shares of the social-media company Tuesday. This was amid optimism regarding the future company’s direction under new Chief Executive Parag.