Pfizer announces coronavirus vaccine, Dow Jones contracts start with more than 1,700 points

Index futures hover at 1312 points after Pfizer news

Written by Peter Niers

Investing.com – U.S. futures have exploded and made big gains after Pfizer reported excellent results for its coronavirus vaccine. And the news helped the future double its earnings after already making good gains before that with clarity on the name of the US president for the next 4 years.

At 7:05 am ET (12:05 GMT), index futures soared, with large gains, reaching 1312 points, or 4.6%, while index futures surged 120 points, or 3.5%. As for index futures, they jumped 140 points, or 1.2%. These indicators had achieved their best week since April of last week.

And earlier today on Monday, US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced that its experimental vaccine, which it had produced jointly with its German partner (BioNTech), had shown more than 90% effectiveness in preventing the Corona virus. , as indicated by preliminary data from a major study. By the company.

This is the first time that pharmaceutical companies have presented successful data for a large-scale clinical trial of the Corona vaccine, which gives hope to end this epidemic which has killed more than a million people worldwide. ‘now.

This is good news for the markets and it will be of great help to the coronavirus task force that President-elect Joe Biden has already set up, after appointing former surgeon general Vivek Murthy and the former FDA Commissioner David Kessler to lead the team.

Over the weekend, Democrat Joe Biden won the US presidential election, after reaching the “magic number” of 270 electoral college votes, winning the state of Pennsylvania, in which the winner gets 20 votes in advice. Although President Donald Trump refused to acknowledge the loss and decided to continue running for a second term through legal proceedings and to seek a recount in states that ended with a slight difference between the two candidates, but in Taking the cases in which this has happened throughout U.S. election history, chances are The President looks slim.

It appears that the results of the US senatorial election have reached the House of Representatives split between the two parties (although this was not decided until January). As a result, markets expect a more generous fiscal stimulus package. And with the Fed’s softer approach, that means monetary policy and fiscal policy will serve to weaken the dollar. Along with the widely held expectations that monetary policy will remain easy, the loose fiscal policy that Democrats usually follow, it is also hoped that the Biden administration will lead to greater cooperation on world trade, especially between major trading blocs, the United States, the European Union and China.

In an ING report, bank analysts wrote: “The central scenario for us is that Biden’s presidency and a divided Congress are a constructive result of risky markets.”

There is no major economic data on the agenda today, but the earnings season continues. McDonald’s, Beyond Meat and Telray will report all of their quarterly results today.

In the oil market, prices rose during today’s trading session even before Pfizer’s announcement. The reason is that the market has seen that Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the US presidential elections and the US Senate elections, which appear to have reached the House of Representatives as a result of a split between the two parties, do neither party wield sufficient power to make fundamental changes to current policy, and it is considered to have only moderate effect.

Futures prices jumped an almost unbelievable rate of 8.7% to trade at $ 40.38 a barrel, while oil futures, which are the global benchmark for oil prices, rose 8% to trade at $ 42.59 a barrel, after both contracts fell more than 4.% in Friday trading.

In the precious metals markets, futures fell 2.1% to trade around $ 1,910 an ounce. In the currency markets, it rose 0.1% against the dollar to trade at 1.1885.