Here are five things to know before Tuesday, December 29:
1.- Stock futures point to more Wall Street records
Stock futures traded higher on Tuesday and were on their way to more records as Wall Street became optimistic with President Donald Trump’s signing of the coronavirus aid package.
Contracts linked to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 113 points, S&P 500 futures were up 14 points and Nasdaq futures were up 45 points.
Shares closed at record highs on Monday after Trump signed a $ 2.3 trillion bill late Sunday that included nearly $ 1 trillion in coronavirus relief. The Dow finished 204 points, or 0.68%, to 30,403, the S&P 500 rose 0.87% to 3,735 and the Nasdaq gained 0.74% to 12,899.
On Monday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would increase stimulus controls for Americans to $ 2,000 of the $ 600 in the legislation Trump signed into law. The president has supported the proposal.
The bill now goes to the Senate. Mitch McConnell, Senate majority leader, did not say whether the upper house would vote on the increased payments.
2. – Nikkei 225 from Japan hits 30 years high
Asian stocks ended higher on Tuesday and Japan’s Nikkei 225 index hit a 30-year high after US President Trump signed the economic aid package.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 jumped 2.7% to 27,568.15, the first time it traded above 27,000 since August 1990, according to FactSet.
To learn more about Asian markets, read:
US strengthens ban on Chinese military companies
3. – Boeing’s 737 MAX will fly again on Tuesday
Boeing’s (BA) – Request report 737 MAX, aground since March 2019 after two fatal accidents, will again fly paying passengers on Tuesday.
American Airlines’ (AAL) – Request report Flight 718 is expected to depart Miami around 10:30 a.m. ET and arrive in New York’s LaGuardia at 1:30 p.m., USA Today reports.
The Federal Aviation Administration approved a return to service for the 737 MAX last month. FAA administrator Steven Dickson at the time said he was “100% certain” of the aircraft’s safety after withdrawing the 20-month-old order that would allow the aircraft to resume commercial flights.
The two crashes of the 737 MAX, in Ethiopia and Indonesia, killing 346 people, were ultimately linked to the jet’s navigation system.
United Airlines (UAL) – Request report said it expects to resume flights from the MAX on Feb. 11.
Shares of Boeing were up 0.81% to $ 217.83 during premarket trading Tuesday.
4. – Coronavirus – the latest
According to Johns Hopkins University, the number of confirmed worldwide deaths from Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, is 1,775,661. Confirmed cases of the virus around the world have risen to more than 81.3 million.
The death toll in the US is 334,963, the highest number in the world. The number of people confirmed infected in the US was 19,308,467.
According to data from the university, there were 150,092 new cases of coronavirus in the US and 1,209 deaths on Monday.
Hospitalizations related to Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, hit news heights Monday.
Health officials in Southern California will likely extend stay-at-home orders on Tuesday as intensive-care unit capacity has fallen to 0%, Governor Gavin Newsom said.
The governor said more than 261,672 vaccine doses have been administered in California to date, Bloomberg reported. He said the state should have received all 904,000 Moderna by the end of the week (MRNA) – Request report vaccine doses and 858,000 Pfizer (PFE) – Request report doses that the state expected to have at this point.
5. – Novavax initiates Phase 3 study with the Covid-19 vaccine
(NVAX) – Request report (NVAX) – Request report has begun a Phase 3 clinical trial of the experimental Covid-19 vaccine in up to 30,000 people at 115 sites in the US and Mexico.
The Novavax shot will be the fifth vaccine to enter the US in the final phase of the test. Moderna and Pfizer vaccines received emergency use clearance from the Food and Drug Administration earlier in December, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines (JNJ) – Request report and AstraZeneca (AZN) – Request report are in large-scale trials.
If the results of the Novavax trial are positive, the vaccine could be approved sometime in 2021.
“We’ve come this far, so fast, but we have to make it to the finish line,” Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, which is helping fund the Novavax study, told The Wall Street Journal. “That will require multiple vaccines with different approaches to ensure that everyone is protected safely and effectively from this deadly disease.”
In addition to NIH support, the Novavax trial will receive $ 1.6 billion from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
Shares of Gaithersburg, Maryland-based Novavax fell 0.73% to $ 116 during premarket trading Tuesday. The stock fell 9.66% on Monday.