By Alex Eule
| Monday, March 30
Bright Spots. After a
weekend when awful Covid-19 headlines continued to pile up,
Monday's stock trading offered a bit of hope. The S&P
500 spent the entire day in positive
territory, slowly gaining ground as the day progressed. The index rose 3.4% on
the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 691 points, or 3.2%.
Both indexes
are now up four of the past five sessions, helping stocks recover from their
darkest days just a week ago. The S&P
500 is now
down 22% from its February record highs; last Monday, the index was down
34% from the peak.
Investor
sentiment seems to be turning optimistic, with stocks shaking off increasingly
tragic numbers on the virus front. Johns
Hopkins now
counts 160,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S.; Italy is a distant No.
2 at 102,000.
But there are
bright spots around the world as, Evie Liu notes on Barrons.com today. New daily
cases are slowing in Italy and Spain, as well as in Seattle, the
first virus hot spot in the U.S.
The optimism
was reflected in the big move for health care, which was the day's
best-performing sector. Johnson &
Johnson shares
jumped 8% after the company said it could have a Covid-19 vaccine by early
next year. J&J said it
would begin manufacturing the vaccine immediately, suggesting confidence
in the treatment's ultimate success. Testing is scheduled to begin in
September. Investors cheered the news even though the company said it would
make the vaccine on a "not-for-profit basis."
Wall Street --
and Barron's readers -- are understandably looking for any reason to be
hopeful. Today's story on J&J by Josh
Nathan-Kazis was, by far, the
most-read item on Barrons.com.
In a separate story, Josh
runs through the nine
vaccine programs worth keeping an eye on.
No comments:
Post a Comment