All Clear for a Santa Rally?
What’s in Today’s Report:
- All Clear for a Santa Rally?
- Weekly Market Preview: All About the Fed
- Weekly Economic Cheat Sheet: First Look at December Data (Is Omicron An Economic Headwind?)
Futures are modestly higher on continued momentum from last week’s rally, following a very quiet weekend of news.
On COVID, the growing consensus is that fully vaccinated people are protected against severe illness while those with boosters are also protected against infection, so it is increasingly unlikely Omicron causes a sustained pullback.
On stimulus, Democrats are still trying to pass the $1.7-ish trillion spending bill before year-end, but Senator Manchin remains an obstacle, and passage of the bill in 2021 (or perhaps at all given high inflation and 2022 is an election year) is becoming increasingly unlikely.
Today there are no economic reports and no Fed speakers so it should be a mostly quiet day, although we could get official vaccine results vs. Omicron from PFE or MRNA any day, and if the data confirms the consensus opinion, that would be a mild tailwind on stocks.