A health-care worker conducts an antigen rapid test for Covid-19.
AFP via Getty Images
Global stocks rose on Monday, on enthusiasm that vaccines will soon end the damage to the economy from the coronavirus pandemic.
With the Tokyo market closed, the Hang Seng edged up 0.1% in Hong Kong and the Kospi Composite rose 1.9%. Reuters reported the Trump administration will restrict the ability of 89 Chinese companies to get access to U.S. technology.
The Stoxx Europe 600 gained 0.7%, with hard-hit travel and energy companies pacing the gains. British Airways owner International Airlines Group rose over 4%.
Drugmaker AstraZeneca said a late-stage study found the vaccine it is developing with the University of Oxford was up to 90% effective, depending on the regimen. The study puts the vaccine as less effective than the roughly 95% effectiveness achieved by vaccines from drugmaker Pfizer and biotech Moderna, though the AstraZeneca vaccine requires only standard refrigeration.
“Investors, encouraged by enthusiasm surrounding successful vaccine developments, signs of the global economy recovering as well as speculation about more dovish monetary policies to come from the Fed, have sent stock prices higher on Monday,” said Pierre Veyret, technical analyst at ActivTrades.
Recent lockdowns helped to send the flash reading of the eurozone composite purchasing managers index to a six-month low in November of 45.1, and a 39.9 reading in France. Any reading below 50 indicates deteriorating conditions. Similar data are due for release in the U.S.
“With the onset of the second wave triggering a new partial lockdown, we seemed to be heading for a long dark winter, but the news of a vaccine breakthrough has brought some very welcome light at the end of the tunnel. Even so, the full herd immunity that is necessary to restore our lives to pre-Covid normality will not be achieved until around summer 2022,” said economists at Dutch bank ABN Amro.
Elsewhere, the dollar rose against the South African rand after both Moody’s and Fitch downgraded the country further into junk-market territory.
