Last night’s prime-time speech from US President Biden announcing plans to make vaccines available to all adults in the US by May 1, and the potential for small gatherings to be held on the July 4th holiday appears to be boosting confidence and optimism about economies reopening. There has also been more good news on the vaccine front as well with Novavax (whose shares are up 16.2% in premarket trading) announcing 96% efficacy against the original strain of COVID and 86% efficacy against the UK variant, potentially adding to the pool of available vaccines and in the longer term, reducing the risk that difficulties with one vaccine could hinder the rollout program.
On this news, the US 10-year treasury note yield is back up to 1.6%, which appears to be rattling some momentum investors into taking profits as NASDAQ futures are down 1.4% this morning, giving back much of yesterday’s 2.0% bounce. This action still appears to be a case of capital rotating between groups but staying in equity markets as Dow Futures are up 0.25%, building on yesterday’s 0.6% gain.
Political/economic optimism in the US and the rise treasury yields appear to have put a tailwind behind the US Dollar today, which is up 0.4% against the Euro, 0.2% against the Canadian Dollar, 1.2% against gold, 2.3% against silver and 3.75% against Bitcoin (which is trading back near $55,000). The rising greenback also appears to be weighing on commodity prices today with WTI crude oil down 0.3% and copper down 0.8%.
Canadian employment bounced back strongly in February, with a gain of 259K jobs, beating the 75K increase the street had expected and erasing January’s 213K job decline. The Canadian unemployment rate dropped to 8.2% from 9.4%, beating the 9.2% street estimate.
SIA Wealth Market Outlook Webinar Tuesday March 16, 2:00 pm EDT
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