Stocks Tumbled at the Open on Washington Discord

U.S. stocks opened sharply lower on Monday, as an agreement to hike the U.S. debt ceiling remained elusive. The Dow Jones industrial Average lately fell 78.24 points, or 0.51%, to 15,158.87. The S&P 500 index shed 8.63 points, or 0.51%, to 1,694.57. The Nasdaq Composite lost 17.26 points, or 0.46%, to 3,774.61.

Senate leaders attempting to avoid a U.S. debt default remained at loggerheads Sunday and escalated the standoff by reopening the contentious issue of automatic spending cuts, damping hopes that some of Congress’s most canny negotiators would break the impasse.

Three American scientists won the 2013 economics Nobel prize on Monday “for their empirical analysis of asset prices,” the award-giving body said. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences gave the 8 million crown ($1.25 million) prize to Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert Shiller.

Tens of thousands of furloughed federal workers are now filing for unemployment benefits — even though they will likely have to pay all of the money back. The government shutdown, which has lasted 11 days so far, has left more than 400,000 federal employees furloughed without pay.

Netflix Inc. (NFLX)  is in discussions with major cable-television operators to add its streaming video service to set-top boxes, according to media reports on Monday.