The Dow Jones and S&P 500 rallied on Wednesday as it was announced that the FDA had found Johnson & Johnson’s single shot vaccine was both safe and effective potentially paving the way for its approval for emergency use by as early as this weekend.
Markets rallied at the open as the Biden administration said they would look to move fast in distributing the vaccine, with as many as 4 million doses set to be distributed by next week.
Earlier today Jeff Zeints, who is working on COVID-19 matters for the Biden administration stated that “If authorized, we’re ready to roll out this vaccine without delay”.
The vaccine which only requires one-shot, is said to be 72% effective in clinical trials.
Now all that is left is for a panel of experts to meet on Friday to decide if the vaccine should be officially authorised.
Both the Dow and S&P 500 were up by over 1% as of writing with the NASDAQ up 0.61%.
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Fed to hit inflation goal in three years
After his comments yesterday that the Fed would keep interest rates unchanged until inflation targets were reached, Jerome Powell today stated that it could take more than 3-years for this to happen.
Powell, who spoke to the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee was asked about Fed inflation projections and stated “We are just being honest about the challenge, we believe we can do it, we believe we will do it. It may take more than three years”.
The Chief at the Federal Reserve only yesterday stated that they would continue to support the U.S. economy for as long as needed, and with inflation targets still far from being hit, this could be a long battle ahead.
Oil Prices Rally to 1-year High
Oil Prices continued to climb this week, with today’s rally leading prices to their highest point in over a year.
This comes despite as data from the Energy Information Administration showed that stockpiles unexpectedly rose last week.
The weekly report from the EIA showed that inventories increased by 1.28 million barrels last week, compared with expectations for a drawdown of 5.19 million barrels.
This comes as oil production in Texas was once again online, after being hit by recent outages.
WTI crude hit an intraday high of $63.31.
Quote of the day – “Losses are necessary, as long as they are associated with a technique to help you learn from them”
David Sichuan
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