See what’s driving market performance around the world in today’s Morning Lineup.  Bespoke’s Morning Lineup is the best way to start your trading day.  Read it now by starting a two-week free trial to Bespoke Premium.  CLICK HERE to learn more and start your free trial.

“In investing, what is comfortable is rarely profitable.” – Robert Arnott

This week has kicked off looking very similar to last week as futures are surging on news of positive date related to a COVID vaccine.  Last week it was Pfizer (PFE), but this morning it was Moderna (MRNA).  Even the timing of the news announcements was similar!  The MRNA news is very good as the headlines suggest the vaccine is more effective and can be stored in less extreme temperature conditions.  What’s also important to note, however, is that futures were already considerably higher before the news, so the animal spirits were already out before the headlines.

In economic news, this week will be a relatively busy one on the data front, but the only report today was Empire Manufacturing for November which came in weaker than expected (6.3 vs 13.5).  Also, don’t forget that earnings season will wind down this week with Walmart (WMT) reporting tomorrow.

Be sure to check out today’s Morning Lineup for a rundown of the latest stock-specific news of note, trends related to the COVID-19 outbreak, and much more.

Outside of the Nasdaq 100, last week was a positive one for every other major index ETF in our Trend Analyzer screen of major US indices.  While QQQ was down just over 1%, the S&P 500 (SPY) was up over 2%, and small caps (IWM) surged over 6%.  Those are impressive gains no matter how you look at it, but they also leave the majority of US indices at not only short-term overbought levels but ‘extreme’ overbought levels (at least 2 standard deviations above the 50-DMA).  Again, this does not mean that equities have to trade lower from here, but from a timing perspective, conditions are poor.