Dow dropped 180 from yesterday's record, decliners over advancers 5-2 & NAZ lost a big 185. The MLP index slid back to the 161s & the REIT index added 1+ to the 396s. Junk bond funds fluctuated & Treasuries were sold, raising the interest rate on the 10 year Treasury to 1.47%. Oil was steady in the 63s & gold sank 22 to 1775.
AMJ (Alerian MLP index tracking fund)
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The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits unexpectedly dropped last week as the labor market continues its slow recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. The Labor Dept reported that 730K Americans filed first-time jobless claims last the week, lower than the 838K forecast. The number of Americans applying for aid has remained stubbornly high for months, hovering around 4 times the pre-crisis level, although it's well below the peak of 7M that was reached when stay-at-home orders were first issued in Mar. More than 70M Americans, 40% of the labor force, have filed for unemployment benefits during the pandemic. There are roughly 10M fewer jobs than there were last year in Feb, before the crisis began. Continuing claims, or the number of Americans who are consecutively receiving unemployment aid, fell to 4.4M, a decline of 101K from the previous week. The report shows that roughly 19M Americans were collecting jobless benefits in the latest week, an increase of 701K from last week. Many more Americans are receiving jobless aid from 2 federal programs that Congress established with the passage of the CARES Act in Mar: One extends aid to self-employed individuals, gig workers & others who typically aren't eligible to receive benefits, & the other provides aid to those who have exhausted their state benefits.
Another 730,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week
Moderna (MRNA) said it expects to generate $18.4B in sales from its Covid-19 vaccine this year. In
releasing Q4 earnings, MRNA also said its chief
medical officer, Tal Zaks, will leave the company in Sep. The news comes a day after the company said it was expecting to produce at least 700M Covid vaccine doses this year. It also expects to produce up to 1.4B Covid vaccine doses in 2022. MRNA
has a deal with the federal gov for 300M doses & has
shipped about 55M doses to the US. It expects to complete
delivery of the first 100M doses to the US by the end of Q1, the 2nd 100M doses by the end of May & the 3rd by Aug. MRNA has been
rapidly working to meet the demand for shots that hopefully will help
bring an end to the pandemic, which has infected more than 112M people & killed at least 2.4M, according to Johns Hopkins University. The
company is in talks with the Food & Drug Administration on a proposal
to fill its Covid vaccine vials with up to 5 additional doses to
ease a bottleneck in manufacturing. One vial of its 2-shot
vaccine contains 10 doses, enough to inoculate 5 people. The company also
said it is in talks with the World Health Organization-backed
COVAX initiative to supply doses this year & in 2022. The stock rose 10.08 (7%).
If you would like to learn more about MRNA, click on this link:
club.ino.com/trend/analysis/stock/MRNAa_aid=CD3289&a_bid=6ae5b6f7
Moderna expects $18.4 billion in 2021 vaccine sales, chief medical officer exits
Inflation could quickly rise once more Americans are vaccinated & the central bank should monitor price signals closely, Kansas City Fed Pres Esther George said. “It is worth recognizing that overall inflation could firm up quickly post-vaccination as demand for hard-hit sectors recovers,” George said. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told Congress this week that inflation was “soft.” The Fed's favorite inflation measure, the personal consumption expenditure price index, has been below the Fed's target of 2% long-term inflation for most of the last decade. Overall PCE inflation was running at 1.3% over the year ending in Dec. George said aggregate inflation measures don't mean so much during the pandemic because prices have been moving dramatically both higher & lower. “While some prices are down, other sectors, particularly durable goods, are recording their fastest price increases in decades,” George added. Some households would be surprised to hear that overall inflation is subdued, she noted. “While we would like for overall inflation to reveal the trend in prices across the entire economy, a wide dispersion in inflation across individual sectors makes overall inflation less informative for that trend,” George said. She said it was too early to discuss pulling back on the central bank's easy policy stance. The notable rise in longer-term interest rates does not warrant a monetary policy response, she added. “Much of this increase likely reflects growing optimism in the strength of the recovery and could be viewed as an encouraging sign for increasing growth expectations,” George said. “If this is indeed the reason that yields are increasing, they are unlikely to rise to the point of smothering the optimism that led to their increase in the first place, and measures of real yields remain deeply negative and only a touch off all-time lows,” she added.
Fed’s George says inflation could ‘firm up quickly’ after vaccinations
Interest rates & oil prices are rising, which is keeping investors away from stocks. Meanwhile the Dems are working on the stimulus bill & are already planing for another one. The jobless claims data remains drab even though it showed improvement this week.
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