By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets drifted higher early Friday in holiday-thinned trend, continuing to look through the short-term pain of the pandemic a day after the number of people nationwide with the Covid-19 virus topped 90,000 for the first time.
By 9:40 AM ET (1440 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 110 points or 0.4% at 29,982 points. It's on course for its highest-ever weekly close, having given back only a small part of the gains it made at the start of the week.
The S&P 500 was also up 0.4% while the NASDAQ Composite was up 0.6%.
Among the biggest gainers in early trade were life sciences companies that stand to gain from any complications with the approval of AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN)'s candidate vaccine for the coronavirus. The Astra/Oxford University drug has registered more conditional sales than most others as national healthcare systems have scrambled to find vaccines at the lowest possible cost. If it isn't approved, then the market opportunity for rival drugs will expand accordingly.
On such consideration, Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) stock was up 12% while Novavax (NASDAQ:NVAX) stock was up 11.1%.
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock extended its latest giddying rally in advance of being admitted to the S&P 500 index, rising another 3.6% after what appeared to be another big squeeze in the options market that forced brokers to buy the underlying stock. It's now added $180 billion in market value in the last 11 days, during which time there has been no major news directly relevant to its fundamental outlook. Its market value now exceeds that of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRKa), a company whose profitability dwarfs that of Elon Musk's electric car empire.
Elsewhere, Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) stock rose 0.7% as the Financial Times reported that it may launch its digital currency Libra in January, albeit in a much more modest form than it first intended. Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS) stocks fell 0.3% after the company said late on Wednesday that it will cut another 4,000 jobs on top of the 28,000 already announced, as it faces a prolonged period of either total shutdown or restricted visitor numbers at everything from its theme parks and cruise liners to the theaters that show its movies.
Newmont Goldcorp (NYSE:NEM) stock rose 0.5%, while Barrick Gold (NYSE:GOLD) stock fell 0.7% as Gold Futures continued to tumble. The yellow metal fell to a five-month low of $1,770.65 an ounce earlier before steadying to be down only 1.4% on the day. Alternative assets such as gold and Bitcoin (which lost another 1.9% on Friday to be down nearly 14% over the last three days alone) have suffered as the prospect of widespread vaccine distribution and an end to the pandemic next year have revived interest in equities - especially cyclical and value stocks - this week.