Coronavirus: Tesla, Apple lose ground as stocks swoon again

Stocks continued with their recent volatile ways, Wednesday, with U.S. shares giving back most of their gains from the previous day’s session as the federal government and various businesses took more steps in the effort to slow down the spread of coronavirus worldwide.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1,052 points, or almost 5%, to 20,184.61, one day after rising more than 1,000 points. At one point, the Dow dipped below the 20,000-point mark for the second time this week.

The S&P 500 was off by 3.4%, at 2,444.03, and the Nasdaq Composite Index shed 2.6%, to slip to 7,144.62.

Tesla shares fell more than 7%, to $399.16 one day after Alameda County officials said the electric carmaker operations were not “essential” work, and ordered Tesla to shut down its Fremont assembly lines. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk had told company employees that he intended to come to work every day, but that it was “totally OK” for any Tesla worker to stay home.

Apple was off by 2.3%, at $247.16 a share. In a sign that business is still going on, Apple on Wednesday released an new iPad Pro starting at $799, as well as a new version of its MacBook Air laptop and Mac Mini computers.

Facebook shares fell by 3%, to $144.86, and Google parent company Alphabet was down by 1.7%, at $1,100 a share. The Washington Post reported that Facebok and Google were involved in discussions with the U.S. government about using cell phone location data as part of the effort to stem the coronavirus outbreak.

Among other leading local companies, Intel shares fell 2.2%, to $48.96, AMD gave up 1.6%, to slip to $41.21 a share, and HP shares were down by 4.4%, at $13.77.

Mild gains came from Netflix, up by 3%, at $329.49 a share, and Cisco Systems, which rose by 2%, to $36.74 a share.