US pre-open: Futures mixed as vaccine rally seemingly comes to a halt
Wall Street futures were mixed ahead of the bell on Thursday as the Covid-19 vaccine rally looked set to come to a halt.
As of 1250 GMT, Dow Jones and S&P 500 futures were down 0.63% and 0.34%, respectively, while Nasdaq-100 futures had the index opening 0.15% firmer.
The Dow closed 23.29 points lower on Wednesday, taking a break from what had been a week of heavy gains on the back of Pfizer and BioNTech's news that its vaccine candidate had shown itself to be 90% effective.
Investors remained focus on positive vaccine headlines, with Moderna announcing on Wednesday that its phase-three trial had accrued enough cases of Covid-19 to submit preliminary results to an independent safety monitoring board.
The news comes as the US reached a new milestone, confirming more than 10.0m cases of the coronavirus, with some areas launching new economic restrictions in an attempt to stop the spread of the outbreak.
CMC Markets analyst David Madden said: "During the week, the optimism surrounding the possible Covid-19 vaccine story ramped up equity markets, and now things have calmed down. Dealers are starting to realise that even though a drug has a very high success rate in late-stage trials, the process of obtaining approval and getting it rolled out, could take a long time.
"Meanwhile, concerns about the health crisis itself have crept back onto the radar. Worries are about rising case numbers have provided dealers with an excuse to trim their exposure to stocks."
On the macro front, October inflation data and this week's jobless claims numbers from the Labor Department will be released at 1330 GMT, while Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell will deliver a speech at 1645 GMT and the US' monthly budget statement will be released at 1900 GMT.
In corporate news, Cisco Systems and Walt Disney were both slated to issue updates after the close.