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Investing.com — U.S. stock markets opened higher on Friday, reversing overnight losses in futures after potentially game-changing news on the pandemic front from U.S. pharma giant Merck.
Merck announced encouraging early results from a small-scale trial of a antiviral pill to treat Covid-19. If the drug is found to be both safe and effective, it could radically change the outlook for building humanity’s defenses against the disease.
Such considerations ensured that the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 149 points, or 0.4%, higher in the first few minutes of trading, while the S&P 500 rose 0.1%. The Nasdaq Composite, which habitually underperforms on news supporting the reopening of pandemic-stricken economies, fell 0.2%.
All three indices had been clearly lower in premarket trading before Merck’s news broke.
Merck stock rose 7.8% on the news. Before the news, it had been down around some 10% since the start of the pandemic, underperforming rivals such as Moderna and Pfizer who had successfully brought to market a new generation of messenger RNA-based vaccines.
Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) stock was down 9.8% on the news, while BioNTech (NASDAQ:BNTX) stock was down 11% and Pfizer Inc (NYSE:PFE) stock down 2.2%.
