US STOCKS-S&P 500, Dow ease from record highs on nerves over Georgia runoff elections

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* FLIR jumps to near 1-year high on $8 bln takeover deal
* Tesla shares hit record high on strong 2020 deliveries
* Indexes down: Dow 0.6%, S&P 0.4%, Nasdaq 0.3%

(Updates to market open)
By Medha Singh and Shivani Kumaresan
Jan 4 (Reuters) - The S&P 500 and the Dow eased from record
levels on the first trading day of the year on Monday as nerves
over the outcome of runoff elections in Georgia this week
countered optimism over a vaccine-driven recovery in the global
economy.
The Dow was also dragged down by a near 3% fall in Boeing Co
BA.N shares after Bernstein cut its rating to "underperform",
saying issues with MAX 787 could significantly hurt the U.S.
planemaker's free cash flow.
The fate of President-elect Joe Biden's agenda including
rewriting the tax code, boosting stimulus and infrastructure
spending hinges firmly on Tuesday's twin Senate races in the
battleground state of Georgia that will determine control of the
chamber. "Its a small reversal but I think people came in the morning
to start the year with some optimism but the cloudy political
picture in the U.S. is weighing down the markets a little bit,"
said Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments in New
Vernon, New Jersey.
"Senate race in Georgia is now a toss up. The Georgia run
off is the much bigger risk as investors have already decided
that COVID will be mostly behind us later in the year."
Wall Street's major averages rounded off 2020 with strong
gains as a wave of monetary stimulus and promising developments
on the vaccine front helped the indexes recover from their
sharpest contraction in decades.
U.S. manufacturing activity picked up at its briskest pace
in more than six years in December, a survey showed on Monday.
It comes on the heels of upbeat factory activity surveys across
Europe and Asian earlier in the day. On the vaccine front, Britain on Monday became the first
country to roll out the COVID-19 shot developed by Oxford
University and AstraZeneca AZN.L . Some investors are cautious about the pace of economic
growth as U.S. jobless claims remain stubbornly high, while a
new round of business closures last month and the discovery of a
new variant of the coronavirus have cast a shadow on the
outlook.
At 10:13 a.m. ET the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI
fell 182.45 points or 0.60% to 30,424.03, the S&P 500 .SPX
lost 15.82 points or 0.42% to 3,740.25 and the Nasdaq Composite
.IXIC lost 34.18 points or 0.27% to 12,854.10.
Energy .SPNY and materials .SPLRCM were the only two
sectors trading higher. Real estate .SPLRCR , utilities
.SPLRCU and industrials .SPLRCI posted the sharpest
percentage declines.
Tesla Inc shares TSLA.O extended a meteoric rally to scale
a record high after the electric-car maker reported
better-than-expected vehicle deliveries in 2020. Shares of FLIR Systems FLIR.O jumped about 20% after
Teledyne Technologies Inc TDY.N agreed to buy the thermal
imaging camera supplier for $8 billion in cash and stock.
Teledyne shares dropped about 8%. Advancing issues matched decliners on the NYSE and
outnumbered decliners by a 1.3-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P 500 posted 52 new 52-week highs and no new low while
the Nasdaq recorded 255 new highs and 11 new lows.