In the United States, nearly $500 billion worth of trades went through stock markets on Monday, one of the busiest days since March, when coronavirus lockdown fears rattled financial markets.

Reuters

News of a breakthrough in the race to find a COVID-19 vaccine sparked one of the heaviest trading days since the height of the pandemic crisis, according to early data analysed by Reuters, with nearly $2 trillion (1.51 trillion pounds) changing hands on Monday.

Traders stampeded to the riskier plays in equities, foreign exchange and bond markets after Pfizer Inc released positive data on its vaccine trial, while rotating out of safe havens such as technology stocks, Japanese yen and top-rated bonds.

"Volumes (are) also surging as programmes and baskets go to work to either correct portfolio balances or address margin calls," said Mark Taylor, sales trader at Mirabaud Securities, highlighting a jump in volumes in the airlines and banking sectors.

In the United States, nearly $500 billion worth of trades went through stock markets on Monday, one of the busiest days since March, when coronavirus lockdown fears rattled financial markets. Europe saw $120 billion traded, according to Refinitiv data.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

Show

related news

Value stocks, typically companies that are more sensitive to economic cycles, notched their best one-day performance against their growth-focused peers ever in the United States after Monday's news of an effective vaccine against the coronavirus.

A similar trend was noticed in the bond and currency markets where volumes matched the panic trading seen during the depths of the market mayhem in March and double that of April when the coronavirus pandemic slammed into markets.

Total turnover for the 33 currency pairs on CLS, a major settler of trades in the currency markets, totalled $627 billion on Monday. Average daily turnover was $707 billion in March and $380 billion in April.

Bond market turnover also jumped. Nearly 170,000 contracts changed hands on the popular front-month German bund futures contracts, 1.5 times this year's average, according to Refinitiv data.

Total turnover on German government bonds on Monday totalled nearly 9 billion euros ($10.63 billion), more than the average since the start of October, according to data from Marketaxess, a major trading platform.

"Turnover was about three times the 30-day average daily volumes in cash and very active in the futures space," said Jimmy Conway, head of EMEA equity trading strategy at Citibank.

Follow our full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic here.

First Published on Nov 10, 2020 10:48 pm

Nearly $2 trillion traded on COVID-19 vaccine news

In the United States, nearly $500 billion worth of trades went through stock markets on Monday, one of the busiest days since March, when coronavirus lockdown fears rattled financial markets.

related news

tags #Bond News #Business #coronavirus #Covid-19 #Dow Jones industrial average #International Markets #Nasdaq Composite #S&P 500 #World News