July 1, 2020

Stocks rallied in the final trading hours of June to finish the best quarter since 1987 for the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  The Dow Jones closed up 0.85% yesterday and 17.8% for the quarter.  The S&P 500 gained 1.5% for the day and 19.9% for the quarter. While the Nasdaq was the biggest winner yesterday and for the quarter up 1.87% and 30.6% respectively.

Although well off the March lows, the recent spike of coronavirus in some states has kept investors cautious. White House health advisor Anthony Fauci testified before the Senate on Tuesday that if the outbreak continues at the current pace, daily new cases could surpass 100,000 new infections per day.   Fauci continued to say that about 50% of the new cases are from Florida, California, Texas and Arizona. This increase is causing some states to roll back their reopening process.

Private payrolls for June rose by 2.369 million according to ADP.  This was slightly below economist’s expectation of 2.5 million.  However, May’s private payroll number was revised from a loss of 2.76 million to a gain of 3.065.

Futures reversed losses this morning on positive news for a coronavirus vaccine.  Pfizer and BioNTech have reported the vaccine they are developing has shown immune responses in healthy patients.  There are currently 178 vaccines in various stages of development, with fourteen currently in human trials.