US close: Dow registers record close following Moderna update

Wall Street stocks turned in solid gains on Monday as the Dow Jones registered a record close thanks to further positive vaccine headlines.

At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.60% at 29,950.44, while the S&P 500 was 1.16% firmer at 3,626.91 and the Nasdaq Composite saw out the session 0.80% stronger at 11,924.13.

The Dow closed 470.63 points higher on Monday, extending gains recorded in last week's vaccine-fuelled rally despite US Covid-19 cases passing 11.0m over the weekend, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Although the country had recently hit a fresh daily record of 184,000 new daily cases, Moderna was in focus on Monday after revealing that its vaccine candidate had shown itself to be 94.5% effective at protecting people from Covid-19 and was proven to last for up to 30 days in household refrigerators and at room temperature for as much as 12 hours.

While Pfizer and BioNTech may have directed much of last week's limelight away from the US presidential election with news that their Covid-19 vaccine candidate was as much as 90% effective in treating the coronavirus, BioNTech chief executive Ugur Sahin has now also claimed that transmission of Covid-19 would be reduced by "maybe 50%" following the vaccine rollout, leading to a "dramatic reduction of the pandemic spread".

On the macro front, manufacturing activity in the New York jurisdiction unexpectedly deteriorated in November, according to the New York Fed's Empire State index, which fell to 6.3 from 10.5 in October, missing consensus expectations for a reading of 13.5. The new orders index slid to 3.7 in November from 12.3 the month before, while the shipments index fell 11.5 points to 6.3 and the index for future business conditions was steady at 33.9, suggesting that firms remained optimistic.

In corporate news, travel and bank stocks were in the green yet again as investors grew increasingly confident about an eventual return to normal economic activity, while Netflix closed 0.8% lower.