Global markets received a major boost on Friday based on positive economic macros coming from the two largest economies, coupled with news of a potentially successful COVID-19 vaccine.
Asian shares surged to a four-month high on Friday morning, after an impressive U.S. payroll data and the Chinese service sector saw global stocks rallying, though a surge in COVID-19 caseloads in the United States limited the upsides.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.5%, reaching their highest level since late February, while Japanese Nikkei 225 gained 0.4%.
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“Recovery in China’s domestic demand is accelerating, even though the external demand is still weak. Thus investors are shifting to domestic-demand oriented sectors,” Wang Shenshen, senior strategist at Mizuho Securities in Tokyo, said in a note to Reuters.
In Europe, markets rallied impressively as the London FTSE is up 0.8%, Paris’s CAC-40 index is up 1.4%, and the DAX index in Frankfurt was 1.6% higher on Thursday.
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The news that a potentially successful COVID-19 vaccine was already in its intermediary stage, raised global investors’ optimism.
Recall that Nairametrics broke the news yesterday of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine being created by America’s pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, and the German firm, BioNTech, that helped in activating immune responses in receivers more than individuals naturally recovering from the infection.
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However, concerns ranging from the resurgence of COVID-19 infections around some global regions, and a relatively high unemployment record at the world’s largest economy, strengthened concerns among global stock traders.
“Back to pre-pandemic (job levels), in my view, will be a matter of years,” Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO and chief strategist of Quill Intelligence in Dallas, TX. “With luck, it will be two years but that is likely optimistic given the number of permanent closures we’ve learned of.”