With the first rollout of the coronavirus vaccine and the approval of federal pandemic relief edging closer, a wave of optimism sharply drove up the value of U.S. stock futures on Monday. Across the ocean, Europe’s markets enjoyed a rally of their own, fueled by the hopes of an impending Brexit trade deal.
Dow Jones rose 0.8% on Monday, with nearly 25% of the index surging by more than 1%. S&P 500 futures rose by 0.8%, while Nasdaq 100 futures increased by 0.55%. Despite the occurrence of an apparent large-scale IT breach and a Google outage, only a limited number of stocks were affected.
According to news reports on Monday, Russian government hackers gained access to the Treasury and Commerce department systems along with those of other government agencies via network management systems, which were operated by software development company SolarWinds (SWI). This saw SolarWinds’ stocks dive by more than 15%.
At the forefront of the pharmaceutical industry is Alexion Pharmaceuticals, whose stock price surged by 33% following news of its acquisition by AstraZeneca. Coronavirus vaccine frontrunners Pfizer and BioNTech rose by 1.6% and 0.9% respectively, while Moderna stood out from the pack with a significant 3.9% increase.
