What a monster session we had in the stock market today. Those who check overnight futures or who are up early in the morning might have thought a decent day was heading toward the bulls.
Turns out it was a robust day. The S&P 500 surged 3.15%, while the Russell 2000 exploded higher by more than 6%. Investors are gobbling up equities as many parts of the United States begin the reopening process and as companies get to back work.
On CBS’s 60 Minutes segment, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said that while GDP will take a big hit, he doesn’t see another depression on the way. He said:
“In this case, you have governments around the world and central banks around the world responding with great force and very quickly. …We’ll get back to the place we were in February; we’ll get to an even better place than that. I’m highly confident of that. And it won’t take that long to get there.”
Coronavirus Treatments Coming?
The European Union is in the process of clearing Gilead’s (NASDAQ:GILD) remdesivir as a treatment for the novel coronavirus. Although the treatment has not yet been fully cleared, the compassionate use of remdesivir has already been recommended by organizations.
Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) is showing positive results in its Phase 1 human trial with its Covid-19 vaccine. All 45 volunteers were split into 3 groups of 15 people each and received 25, 100 or 250 microgram doses. All 45 participants produced Covid-19 antibodies.
To be more specific, two weeks after receiving a second dose, patients in the 25-microgram group had the antibody levels typically seen in people who have recovered from the disease. Those in the 100-microgram group had antibodies that exceeded those in recovered patients.
Moderna shares surged 20% in the stock market today.
Movers in the Stock Market Today
Uber (NYSE:UBER) and Grubhub (NYSE:GRUB) want to merge, but can’t seem to agree on a price. As talks continued over the weekend, Grubhub refused Uber’s last offer of 1.9 of its shares for each Grubhub share. Uber can up its number to 1.925 shares, but Grubhub said that’s still below what the company is looking for.
Less than two weeks after Uber cut 3,700 employees, the company is cutting another 3,000 jobs. According to an email from CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber also plans to consolidate or shut down 45 offices. It’s also considering cuts to other businesses, like it freight unit.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) plans to reopen more than 25 stores in the U.S this week. Things will look a little different though, as temperature checks and masks will now be mandatory, as will social distancing and limited occupancy policies. Apple also plans to reopen 10 stores in Italy starting Tuesday.
BMO upgraded Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) to outperform from market perform. Its price target was raised almost 50% from $285 to $425. According to analyst Ambrish Srivastava, the decision was based on “the continued execution on the data center side, along with the latest product rollout.” The analyst believes Nvidia can eventually grow its data center business to at least a $20 billion annual run rate.
Bret Kenwell is the manager and author of Future Blue Chips and is on Twitter @BretKenwell. As of this writing, Bret Kenwell is long AAPL and NVDA.
