It would appear the market is beginning to operate as if a Biden administration will be entering the White House in January 2021. There are still some legal ripples flowing through vote counts, etc., but market indexes are bifurcated in a way they haven’t been in 20 years — literally. The last time we saw the Dow surge strongly ahead while the Nasdaq dipped into the red was back in 2000, when the tech bubble of the pre-Y2K market began to burst.
This is not to suggest any sort of “burst” is inevitable for tech stocks going forward, regardless who is president next year. But with knowledge that social media and e-commerce giants are expected to be prodded and poked under Biden, in order to determine whether
Alphabet
GOOGL
,
Facebook
FB
,
Amazon
AMZN
and the rest are operating as relative monopolies, the way Ma Bell was broken up into an entire domestic telecommunications in the early 80s.
Of course, the sudden rotation out of “stay at home” equities like
Zoom Video
ZM
and
Netflix
NFLX
on the news about
Pfizer
’s
PFE
Covid vaccine candidate basically being ready for market has brought a bigger contrast than normal to this bifurcation. The same goes for the sudden surge in oil and gas companies like
ConocoPhillips
COP
, which had been lain relatively dormant during the depths of the pandemic. Thus, the Dow is up 130 points a half-hour before Tuesday’s opening bell, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq is -150 points.
Eli Lilly
LLY
is the latest pharma major to get good news on its Covid-19 treatment efforts: its antibody treatment, known currently as bamlanivimab (marketing title yet to come), has been approved for emergency use by the FDA. It is not a vaccine for Covid-19, but helps limit the severity of coronavirus cases in adult patients who display mild symptoms. President Trump was treated with bamlanivimab during his hospital stay at Walter Reed when he contracted the disease. The treatment generates monoclonal antibodies which assist one’s immune system to fight off the virus. Shares of Lilly are up 4% in early trading.
D.R. Horton
DHI
put the strengthening housing market on display with its fiscal Q4 earnings results reported this morning. Earnings of $2.24 per share were well out in front of the $1.76 expected, up 66% year over year, on revenues of $6.4 billion beating the Zacks consensus by 8%, and up 27% year over year. The improving market has also led D.R. Horton to raise its guidance and dividend yield. Shares are up 3% in today’s pre-market.
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