Futures on U.S. stock indices are moving up amid positive sentiment on European platforms. The British FTSE and French CAC added 1.3% to 1.2%. German DAX is less optimistic. Growth in the German stock index fell short of 0.8%.
Futures contracts on Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq bet on a positive opening of the U.S. stock market in the range of 0.5% – 0.9%?
The weekend brought both awareness of the danger of a new threat from South Africa and an understanding of preparedness in the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors to the minds of investors.
Leading corporations in the industry have already indicated their readiness to get involved in neutralising the new viral threat. This has been confirmed both at BioNTech, which is co-inventing the vaccine with US Pfizer, and at Moderna, whose chief medical officer has said that a reformatted vaccine from the omicron version could be released as early as 2022.
Investors are looking with hope at the statements of the main “saviors” of humanity. Moderna (MRNA) shares are up 10% at Monday’s premarket. And that’s after a 20% rise on Friday. BioNTech (BNTX) and Novavax (NVAX) are up 4-5%. Pfizer (PFE) is up 1.7%.
Rebound in oil quotations is more than 5% for WTI, and 4.8% for Brent.
