Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
NYSE
Futures U.S. stock markets opened along the flat line on Sunday night before the first session of 2021 after a volatile trading year.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell just 37 points, or 0.1%. The future S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 fell marginally.
Both the Dow and the S&P 500 closed the record high on Thursday, the last trading day of 2020, to end a year of surprisingly strong gains.
The 30-share Dow ended last year with a 7.3% advance, and the S&P 500 rose 16.3% at that time. At one point in 2020, the two market benchmarks fell by more than 30% as the coronavirus pandemic ravaged the global economy.
The real highlight of 2020 was the Nasdaq Composite, which rose 43.6% to make its biggest one-year gain since 2009. The Nasdaq’s overtaking came as investors and traders went bring together technological actions within reach of the Covid-19 outbreak.
Unprecedented fiscal and monetary support for the economy, along with the development and deployment of multiple Covid-19 vaccines, helped the market recover from its massive downturn to return to operating at record highs.
“The stock market is positioned to make new gains in 2021 based on the two pillars of the coordinated fiscal and monetary policy of the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board and a success in deploying COVID vaccines,” he wrote Marc Chaikin, CEO of Chaikin Analytics. “However, let’s imagine some bumps on the road along the way.”
U.S. implementation of multiple Covid-19 vaccines has recently slowed due to supply constraints.
Moncef Slaoui, the head of Operation Warp Speed, said Sunday that the U.S. could increase the launch of the vaccine by giving a group of Americans half a dose of the drug developed by Moderna. “We know that for the Modern vaccine administering half the dose to people between the ages of 18 and 55 … induces an identical immune response to the 100 microgram dose,” Slaoui said.
The number of coronavirus cases also continues to rise in the United States, causing concern about the speed of economic recovery in 2021. Data collected by Johns Hopkins University showed that more than 20 million Covid-19 s infections have been confirmed in the US, along with 1.8 million deaths related to the virus. Several cases of a new strain of coronavirus have also been confirmed across the country.
Wall Street is also monitoring Georgia as the state prepares Tuesday for Senate elections, which could give Democrats a majority in the House.
“With Georgia’s second-round elections on Tuesday and the drama of election universities on Wednesday, expect two-way trading this week and a recovery in short-term volatility,” Chaikin added.
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