Market players are watching carefully this morning to see if the Moderna (MRNA) vaccine news triggers the same sort of response that the Pfizer (PFE) news triggered exactly a week ago.
When Pfizer surprised the market last week there was both a 'sell the news' response as well as major rotational action. The big cap technology names were sold aggressively while money moved into financials and some of the DJIA names like Boeing (BA) which are viewed as beneficiaries of 'reopening'.
So far this morning we are seeing some similar type of action with small-caps (IWM) gaining 2.2% while the Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) is lagging with a gain of 0.5%
Breadth is quite good with around 5800 gainers to 1500 losers. One major positive is that the number of new 12-month highs has jumped to around 400 names. The expansion in new highs illustrates that there are some new pockets of momentum building in the 'reopen' names and suggests that the buying could be sustained.
The rotational nature of this action is making for some tricky trading as the best stocks are those that have performed worst recently while recent leaders are now struggling.
An additional factor that the market is not addressing very well is how much short-term fallout will there be from the increase in Covid cases. The vaccines will not be in wide use for months and there could be some shorter-term problems especially if there is no fiscal stimulus until next year.
I've not made many moves so far this morning but will be making adjustments later today. Charts still need work and the action is unusually choppy.
(Boeing is a holding in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS member club. Want to be alerted before Jim Cramer buys or sells BA? Learn more now.)
