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Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
NYSE
U.S. equity futures opened along the flat line on Sunday night ahead of the first session of 2021 after a year of volatile trading.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell just 37 points, or 0.1%. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures fell slightly.
The Dow and S&P 500 closed at record highs Thursday, the last trading day of 2020, to close a year of surprisingly strong gains.
The 30-stock Dow Jones ended last year with a 7.3% lead, and the S&P 500 rose 16.3% during that time. At one point in 2020, both market benchmarks were down more than 30% as the coronavirus pandemic ravaged the global economy.
The real trump card of 2020 was the Nasdaq Composite, which jumped 43.6% for its biggest gain in a year since 2009. The Nasdaq’s outperformance came as investors and traders flocked to plagued tech stocks. to the Covid-19 epidemic.
Unprecedented fiscal and monetary support to the economy – coupled with the development and deployment of several Covid-19 vaccines – has helped the market recover from its massive plunge to return to record levels.
“The stock market is positioned for further gains in 2021 based on the two pillars of a coordinated fiscal and monetary policy of the US Treasury and Federal Reserve and a successful deployment of the COVID vaccine,” wrote Marc Chaikin, CEO of Chaikin Analytics. “However, we expect a few bumps in the road along the way.”
The US deployment of several Covid-19 vaccines has recently been slowed down due to supply constraints.
Moncef Slaoui, the head of Operation Warp Speed, said on Sunday that the United States could speed up the deployment of its vaccine by giving a group of Americans half-doses of the drug developed by Moderna. “We know that for the Moderna vaccine, giving half the dose to people between the ages of 18 and 55 … induces an immune response identical to the 100 microgram dose,” Slaoui said.
The number of coronavirus cases also continues to rise in the United States, raising concerns about the speed of the economic recovery in 2021. Data compiled by Johns Hopkins University showed that more than 20 million Covid-19 infections have been confirmed in the United States, along with more than 1.8 million virus-related deaths. Several cases of a new strain of coronavirus have also been confirmed across the country.
Wall Street is also watching Georgia as the state braces for a Senate run-off on Tuesday, which could give Democrats a majority in the chamber.
“With the second round of elections in Georgia on Tuesday and the electoral college drama on Wednesday, expect bilateral trade this week and a resumption of near-term volatility,” Chaikin added.
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