Excitement over news of potentially effective vaccines for COVID-19 has been tempered by concerns over the logistical challenges of ensuring access to billions of people. Meanwhile, case-loads are rising, leading governments to re-instate restrictions on business and other activities to battle the pandemic.

“Vaccine trades reversed to give way to ‘stay home’ trades,” as shares of technology companies and others that do well when people stay home and work remotely rallied, Mizuho Bank said in a commentary. But it added, “Fact of the matter is, progress on vaccine development is at worst two steps forward one step back, and not one step forward and two steps back on a sustained basis.”

On Wall Street, the future for the S&P 500 slipped 0.6% while the contract for the Dow industrials lost 0.7%. In Asian trading, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index gained 0.7% to 25,520.88 despite a report that machinery orders fell in September, suggesting weakness in corporate investment. The benchmark has been trading near 30-year highs despite a resurgence of COVID-19 cases that has officials urging people to stay home over the holidays.

Investors have embraced hopes that one or more coronavirus vaccines could help corral the virus by the second half of next year, encouraging people to return to life as it was before the pandemic. All that economic activity would come on top of the aid the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world are pumping into the economy through very low interest rates and massive purchases of bonds.