Dow futures jump nearly 500 points as investors applaud Moderna vaccine progress



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Stock index futures added to the gains on Monday after Moderna Inc. said its vaccine candidate has been shown to be highly effective in preventing COVID-19 infections, as investors looked beyond a Continued surge in new cases of the disease and lack of progress toward another round of helping consumers run out of steam.

Moderna news comes just a week after Pfizer Inc. PFE,
+ 2.85%
and BioNTech SE BNTX,
+ 4.30%
announced the first effective COVID-19 vaccine, triggering a rally in stocks and a violent out-of-stock rotation that benefited from the living environment created by the pandemic in favor of stocks that were left behind.

What are the main benchmarks doing?

Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average YM00,
+ 1.69%
rose 474 points, or 1.6%, to 29,874, while S&P 500 ES00 futures,
+ 1.02%
added 36.85 points, or 1%, to trade at 3618.75. Future high-tech Nasdaq-100 NQ00,
-0.26%
were down 6.75 points, or 0.1%, to 11,825.50.

Stocks closed with strong gains on Friday, pushing the S&P 500 SPX,
+ 1.36%
its first record close since September 2 and the small cap Russell 2000 RUT,
+ 2.08%
to its first record since 2018. A rotation away from the large-cap tech behemoths that have been the main beneficiaries of the anywhere work phenomenon has seen the Nasdaq Composite COMP,
+ 1.02%
lagging behind as investors turned to stocks and sectors left behind by the pandemic.

For the week, the Dow DJIA,
+ 1.37%
rose 4.1% to close at 29,479.81 on Friday, 0.2% below its record close of 29,551.42 set on February 12. Friday at 11829.29.

What drives the market?

Modern
RNAm,
+ 1.79%
said its COVID-19 vaccine candidate reduced COVID-19 infections by 94.5%. The company said it plans to submit an emergency use authorization to the United States Food and Drug Administration in the coming weeks. Moderna shares jumped about 13% in pre-market trading.

Last week’s rally was inspired after Pfizer and BioNTech SE announced on November 9 that their vaccine candidate was over 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 infections in an advanced stage trial.

The positive news on the vaccine front has given investors “more certainty that the pandemic will end as early as next year,” Hussein Sayed, chief market strategist at FXTM, said in a note.

The United States counted 135,187 new cases on Sunday and at least 623 people have died, according to a New York Times tracker. Over the past week, the United States has averaged 150,265 cases per day, up 81% from the two-week average and cases are on the rise in 50 states and territories.

While tech stocks and other homemaking beneficiaries lagged behind, hard-hit industries and sectors, including airlines, energy, finance, and retail, benefited last week. Whether the rotation will continue in the short term is questionable, Sayed said, but argued that there was “good value” in holding cyclical and economically sensitive stocks over the long term.

Lily: Stock investors ‘go through 3 transitions’ and short-term volatility can be ‘heartbreaking’

“By combining the impact of a vaccine with continued fiscal and monetary support, profits are likely to grow double digits in 2021 compared to the tech industry which will struggle to beat its performance in 2020,” he said. he declares.

News related to the agreements was also a central concern, PNC Financial Services Group Inc.
Cabin crew,
+ 1.47%
has agreed to buy the U.S. arm of Spain’s BBVA in a $ 11.6 billion deal, the companies said on Monday, in one of the biggest bank mergers since the financial crisis. PNC shares rose 1.8% in pre-market trading, while BBVA shares.

Meanwhile, investors have looked past a stalled transition as President Donald Trump continued to refuse to accept the November 3 presidential election results.

Trump tweeted early on Sunday what appeared to be tacit acknowledgment that Biden won the election, but repeated his claim, without evidence, that the election was rigged. Federal agencies have described the voting process as the safest in electoral history. Trump then tweeted that he had not conceded.

Lily: Trump isn’t going quietly and the fiscal stimulus won’t come easily, but investors have bigger things to worry about

The economic calendar is light on the data, with the New York Federal Reserve Bank’s Empire State Index at 8:30 a.m. EST.

Which companies are targeted?
  • High-end shopping center developer Taubman Centers Inc. accepted a price reduction when it was purchased by Simon Property Group Inc. SPG, in a move that will allow companies to avoid an endless legal battle that was to start on Monday. Simon will pay $ 43 per share for Taubman under the new deal, they said on Sunday. That’s down from the original price of $ 52.50. Simon shares rose more than 7% in pre-market trading, while Taubman shares

  • Casper Sleep Inc.
    CSPR,
    + 12.57%
    shares fell 15% in pre-market trading after the mattress-in-a-box seller saw a larger-than-expected loss of revenue in the third quarter, which declined unexpectedly, due to chain challenges supply due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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