Market Coverage: Friday November 20th Yahoo Finance

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Stock futures were mixed Friday morning as rising COVID-19 cases raised the specter that more restrictions would be unleashed across U.S. cities and states, threatening to crimp business activity and jeopardize the tenuous economic recovery.

Investors weighed these risks against a steady flow of positive news over a vaccine. Futures came off their lows of the overnight session, and contracts on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq ticked higher, after Pfizer (PFE) and BioNTech (BNTX) said they plan to file for an emergency use authorization with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday, which would allow them to have their vaccine used in the U.S. starting in December.

In Washington, optimism over another virus-relief bill at least momentarily reignited after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said during a press conference Thursday that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) agreed to pick back up stimulus discussions. The Dow, which had been negative for much of Thursday’s session, managed to eke out a modest gain on the day after Schumer’s comments.

Though Democratic and Republican lawmakers have remained at an impasse for months over the size and contents of another relief package, Schumer’s remarks nevertheless offered a sliver of hope that more aid might get agreed upon and advanced even ahead of the final Senate runoffs and Inauguration Day in January. Still, however, the Senate already adjourned for the Thanksgiving holiday earlier this week and will not meet again for another full session until the end of the month, narrowing the window of opportunity for new legislation to get passed.

In November, stocks largely rallied as vaccine-makers’ upbeat efficacy data gave investors more conviction that a post-COVID era was feasible for 2021. But in the very near-term, rising case counts and hospitalizations have already spurred a host of cities and states to unleash a host of new restrictions to keep the virus at bay until an inoculation becomes widely available. In the Northeast, New Hampshire imposed a mask-wearing mandate, and Rhode Island announced a two-week “pause” effective at the end of the month. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday issued new guidance urging Americans not to travel for Thanksgiving, and to avoid gatherings with those outside their households.

To many analysts, these factors have increased the urgency for officials to provide more stimulus to lessen the scarring to the economy and labor market especially that may occur in the waiting time for a vaccine.

“At some point, we will need to reconcile the economic underpinnings. There’s going to be, call it two quarters plus another few months, where we are going to have to rely on the underlying economy to kind of come along with our expectations,” Jack Ablin, Cresset Capital chief investment officer, told Yahoo Finance on Thursday. “And where COVID is right now, it looks like a pretty dire situation in the near-term. And we’ll see whether policy, whether fiscal or monetary, can paper over those differences.”

New data on Thursday underscored the early labor market repercussions of the latest surge in COVID-19 cases. New jobless claims unexpectedly rose for the first time in five weeks last week, in what may well be the start of a trend this winter, economists warned.

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