Vaccine hopes boost Wall Street open
Wall Street’s main indexes rose today as hopes that the first Covid-19 vaccine could be available within weeks renewed bets of a swift economic recovery next year.
The Dow Jones index was up 0.57 per cent, a rise mirrored by the S&P 500, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index gained 0.87 per cent.
The US Food and Drug Administration is likely to approve in mid-December the distribution of the vaccine made by Pfizer and German partner BioNTech, a top official of the government’s vaccine development effort said on Sunday.
Global equity markets received a boost earlier today as AstraZeneca became the latest major drugmaker to say its COVID-19 vaccine could be around 90% effective, although its shares fell 1.9% as some traders perceived the efficacy data as disappointing compared with rivals.
“There’s good news on the coronavirus vaccine and that’s building a lot of enthusiasm in a short trading week, but the enthusiasm might be getting a little bit overdone,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities in New York.
“It isn’t like the vaccine is going to be distributed tomorrow. It’s going to take at least a month and so we are still pretty far away before reality sets in.”
Evidence of high efficacy rates in experimental vaccines lifted the S&P 500 to a record high earlier this month and sparked demand for stocks such as industrials, energy and banks, sending the S&P value index up more than 10%.
By contrast, the growth index, which comprises heavyweight technology stocks, has risen less than 8% in November after leading Wall Street’s recovery from its coronavirus lows.