U.S. stock futures opened slightly higher on Monday night after two of the three major market benchmarks closed at record levels.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were up marginally and S&P 500 futures gained 0.1%. Nasdaq 100 futures outperformed, rising 0.6%.
Tesla shares jumped more than 10% after S&P Dow Jones Indices said the electric car maker would join the S&P 500 index, effective Dec. 21.
Earlier in the day, the Dow and S&P 500 posted all-time closing highs. The Dow also notched an intraday record. Those gains came after Moderna released trial data showing its coronavirus vaccine was more than 94% effective, further raising expectations of a sharp economic recovery.
That marked the second positive announcement related to a coronavirus vaccine in a week. Pfizer and BioNTech said Nov. 9 that their Covid-19 vaccine candidate was more than 90% effective among participants in a late-stage trial.
Value stocks led the advance on Monday, building on their strong gains from last week. The iShares Russell 1000 Value ETF (IWD) jumped 1.9%, while its growth counterpart closed higher by just 0.5%.
“Value and smaller companies typically have more leverage to economic recoveries so a vaccine that would remove the weight of COVID-19 off the economy is a distinct positive,” wrote Bill Stone, chief investment officer at Stone Investment Partners. “Time will tell if this reversal in trends proves durable or starts “makin’ the tears rain down like a monsoon” for value proponents like the many recent false starts.”
The recent outperformance in value stocks comes even as the number of coronavirus cases continues to increase, dampening the country’s near-term economic outlook.
More than 1 million cases were confirmed in less than a week in the U.S., bring the country’s total to more than 11 million, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Data from The Covid Tracking Project also showed U.S. coronavirus-related hospitalizations have risen to nearly 70,000.
“The near-term COVID backdrop remains bleak with exploding cases, rising hospitalizations, and additional mitigation measures,” wrote Adam Crisafulli, founder of Vital Knowledge. “But the broader tape is willing to overlook all this for the time being.”
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