S&P 500 eases back below 4700 as investors weigh up pandemic news, await US CPI

US equities appear on course to snap a three-day win streak, amid a more tentative feel to trade on Thursday as investors weigh up recent Omicron news and look ahead to key US inflation data on Friday ahead of a bonanza of major central bank activity next week. The S&P 500 shed a modest 0.3% to trade around 4690, while the Dow gained about 0.25% to move above 35.8K. The Nasdaq 100 was down about 0.8% and the CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index, often referred to as “Wall Street’s fear guage” rose about half a point to move back above 20.00.

In terms of the pandemic news, investors are weighing positive recent news that Omicron infections tend to be milder than infection by previous variants and that a third shot of the Pfizer vaccine is effective in neutralising the Omicron variant (according to Pfizer themselves) against a continued trend towards tighter global health restrictions. Much was made yesterday of UK PM Boris Johnson’s announcement that the UK would move to Covid-19 “Plan B”, which would see restrictions reimposed on everyday life and people encouraged to work from home.

Elsewhere, US equity markets weren’t particularly reactive to Thursday’s much stronger than expected weekly jobless claims report. In the week ending on November 4, just 184K people signed up for unemployment insurance, the lowest such weekly tally since 1969. This prompted calls by some for the Fed to respond to “full employment” with immediate rate hikes, not that this troubled equity markets much at the time.

Separately, in notable individual stock news; there was a fair amount of attention on Apple, as the company’s market capitalisation approaches $3T. Shares need only rally about another 4.5% for the company to reach the significant milestone. At present, AAPL shares are trading around $175.50, which gives the company a market cap of about $2.87T.