Markets Up Yesterday, Poised To Close Higher For The Month  Image: Bigstock Stocks closed mostly higher yesterday, with the Dow and the S&P gaining nearly half what they gave up on Wednesday while the Nasdaq had to settle for a little less than a quarter. But it was nice to see green. Today is the last trading day in January. At the moment, it looks like most of the indexes are on pace to close higher for the month. While the Dow is off -0.01% MTD, the S&P is up 0.83%, the Nasdaq is up 3.48%, and the small-cap Russell 2000 is up 6.67%. As they say, as January goes, so goes the year. If that's true, it looks like we should have another solid year. Especially for tech and small-caps! The first estimate for Q4 GDP came out at 4.0%, just under the consensus for 4.1%. That's a far cry from Q3's record of 33.4%. But it was on par with Q4 of 2019 (4.1%) before this pandemic started. And that's not too shabby. With more and more big cities easing restrictions and letting businesses open up, Q1 looks like it could be sharply higher. Adding to that optimism was a report that showed the vaccine by Novavax has a nearly 90% efficacy rate in Phase 3 trials in the UK.
That means we could soon have 5 vaccines in the world. The FDA has already approved vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech, and Moderna. The UK has approved one by Oxford/AstraZeneca (and they just recently filed for FDA approval here in the states). Johnson & Johnson's vaccine is showing promising results. And now we have hopes for Novavax. The vaccines mark the beginning of the end of the pandemic. The Fed's Jerome Powell even said as much in Wednesday's Fed Chair Press Conference. But getting vaccines to everyone has so far been a challenge. So the more vaccines there are, the greater coverage we'll be able to see. Soon the economy and the world will be back to normal. And stocks are expected to soar as pent-up demand is unleashed. We saw that last year when we first came off of lockdown. That was reflected in Q3's outsized GDP. But large parts of our economy were still closed.
When it's all reopened, it's going to be amazing.
In the meantime, it's still earnings season. We've got 103 stocks on deck for today. Another 791 next week. And another 833 the week after that. Earnings season is always an exciting time since stocks usually go up during earnings season. So make sure you're taking full advantage of it. Best,  Kevin Matras
Executive Vice President, Zacks Investment Research | 
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