The Future Looks Brighter

By Alex Eule |  Wednesday, July 1

Push and Pull. Investors will have to get used to days like this, if they haven't already. There was good news about the future just as current conditions get worse. 

Arizona, California, Georgia, and Texas all reported a record number of  daily Covid-19 infections. California is re-closing bars and indoor dining in many of its counties, and New York City said it was delaying its own planned reopening of indoor restaurant spaces. 

That would all be particularly depressing save for one bright spot: Drug giant Pfizer reported positive early results on its vaccine candidate. The vaccine news helped push the S&P 500 up 0.5% on the day, its third-straight day of gains. The Nasdaq Composite jumped nearly 1% to a new record.

Barron's Josh Nathan-Kazis notes that the Pfizer data was received more positively than recent disclosures from other vaccine makers, including Moderna and Inovio Pharmaceuticals. 

The release was more detailed than similar updates from Moderna and Inovio have been. What’s more, the companies made a manuscript of the full results available on a so-called pre-print server, which publishes scientific papers as they await peer review.

Pfizer's stock closed up 3.2%. The initial results came from a testing universe of 45 people. A trial slated to begin later this month will include 30,000 subjects. If all goes well, Pfizer and its German biotech partner BioNTech could manufacture up to 100 million doses of the vaccine by the end of the year and "potentially more than 1.2 billion doses by the end of 2021."

There was mixed news on the job front. Payroll processor ADP said 2.4 million workers were hired in June. That's significant progress from the huge losses early in the pandemic, but the figure was below expectations. Economists had been forecasting an increase of 3 million jobs. ADP, meanwhile, revised its May figure to a gain of 3.1 million jobs. It originally  reported a loss of 2.8 million.