Here are five things you need to know for Tuesday, December 29:
1. – Stock Futures Indicate More Wall Street Records
Equity futures traded higher on Tuesday and were on track for more records as Wall Street gained optimism through President Donald Trump’s signing of the coronavirus relief package.
Contracts linked to the Dow Jones industrial average rose 113 points, S&P 500 futures rose 14 points and Nasdaq futures jumped 45 points.
Stocks closed at record highs on Monday after Trump signed a $ 2.3 billion bill late Sunday that includes nearly $ 1 billion in coronavirus relief. The Dow rose 204 points, or 0.68%, to 30,403, the S&P 500 rose 0.87% to 3,735, and the Nasdaq rose 0.74% to 12,899.
Late Monday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would increase stimulus checks for Americans to $ 2,000 from the $ 600 in legislation Trump signed. The president supports the proposal.
The bill now goes to the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did not say whether the upper house would vote on the increased payments.
2. – Japan’s Nikkei 225 hits 30-year high
Asian stocks ended higher on Tuesday and the Japanese Nikkei 225 index peaked at 30 years after US President Trump signed the economic aid package.
The Nikkei 225 in Tokyo rose 2.7% to 27,568.15, according to FactSet, the first time it had traded above 27,000 since August 1990.
Read more about Asian markets:
US tightens ban on Chinese military-affiliated companies
3. – Boeing’s 737 MAX will fly again on Tuesday
Boeing’s (BA) – Get report 737 MAX, grounded since March 2019 after two fatal crashes, will fly with paying passengers again on Tuesday.
American Airlines’ (AAL) – Get report Flight 718 is expected to depart from Miami around 10:30 a.m. and arrive at New York LaGuardia at 1:30 p.m., USA Today reports.
The Federal Aviation Administration last month approved the 737 MAX. FAA administrator Steven Dickson at the time said he was “100% confident” in the safety of the plane after withdrawing the 20-month-old order that allows the plane to resume commercial flights.
The two accidents of the 737 MAX, in Ethiopia and Indonesia, in which 346 people died, were eventually linked to the aircraft’s navigation system.
United Airlines (UAL) – Get report said he expects to resume flights to the MAX on February 11.
Boeing shares rose 0.81% to $ 217.83 on Tuesday.
4. – Coronavirus – The latest
According to Johns Hopkins University, the number of confirmed worldwide deaths due to 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 U.S. death toll is 334,963, the most in the world. The number of confirmed infected people in the US was 19,308,467.
According to university data, there were 150,092 new cases of coronavirus in the US and 1,209 deaths.
Hospitalizations related to Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, reached news on Monday.
Health officials in Southern California on Tuesday are likely to extend stay-at-home orders as the capacity of the intensive care unit drops to 0%, Gavin Newsom said.
According to the governor, more than 261,672 doses of vaccines have been administered in California, Bloomberg reports. He said the state should have received 904,000 Moderna by the end of the week. (MRNA) – Get report vaccine doses and 858,000 Pfizer (PFE) – Get report doses expected by the state at this stage.
5. – Novavax starts Phase 3 trial of Covid-19 vaccine
(NVAX) – Get report (NVAX) – Get report has launched a Phase 3 clinical trial of its experimental Covid-19 vaccine in up to 30,000 people at 115 locations in the US and Mexico.
The Novavax uptake will be the fifth vaccine to enter the final phase of the US test. Vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer received earlier December approval for emergency use from the Food and Drug Administration, and vaccines from Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) – Get report and AstraZeneca (AZN) – Get report is in large-scale trials.
If the results of the trial of Novavax are positive, the vaccine could be approved somewhere in 2021.
“We came so fast, but we have to get 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. “Several vaccinations are needed with different approaches to ensure that everyone is protected safely and effectively against this deadly disease.”
In addition to supporting the NIH, the Novavax trial will receive $ 1.6 billion from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Shares of Novithax, based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, fell 0.73% to $ 116 in pre-trading on Tuesday. The stock fell 9.66% on Monday.