The stock market rally is still in force, but it's livin' on the edge following a second week of violent selling. The Nasdaq composite closed below its 50-day moving average.
Apple (AAPL) and Tesla stock, among the market rally's big winners, especially in the final weeks to the top, sold off hard. Shopify (SHOP), DocuSign (DOCU) and Microsoft (MSFT) are below their 50-day lines.
In separate news, SoftBank is near a deal to sell wireless chip designer Arm Holdings to Nvidia (NVDA) for more than $40 billion, according to multiple reports. Nvidia has been in talks to buy Arm, which designs chips for Apple, Intel (INTC), Samsung and more, for several weeks. An agreement, if it happens, could come early next week. An Nvidia-Arm deal could face antitrust concerns.
Gilead Sciences (GILD) reportedly is close to a takeover agreement topping $20 billion for Immunomedics (IMMU), which has a breast cancer drug. Immunomedics has market cap of about $9.8 billion. An announcement could come Monday.
AstraZeneca (AZN) and Oxford University have restarted their final-stage trial of their coronavirus vaccine. The trial was paused last week after one participant became violently ill. It's still clear what the cause was.
Pfizer (PFE) and BioNTech (BNTX) are looking to expand their late-stage coronavirus vaccine trial to 44,000 people, from 30,000. That would allow testing on a more diverse population, including older teens and some Hepatitis B and C sufferers.
The AstraZeneca and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine candidates are generally seen as furthest along, with Moderna (MRNA) close behind.
Dow Jones Futures
Dow Jones futures won't open until 6 p.m. ET, along with S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq 100 futures.
Remember that overnight action in Dow futures and elsewhere doesn't necessarily translate into actual trading in the next regular stock market session. As the past few days have shown, Dow Jones futures are even less predictive during stock market volatility.
Ukrainian investors
So here's what Ukrainian investors should do. Be defensive and at this point aggressive too. Have a correction game plan. And build a watchlist of juicy stocks such as Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (ISRG), Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM), PerkinElmer (PKI), Target (TGT) and Chipotle stock.
Libo, Capt.
