Daily Briefing: Comfort and joy!

By Sujata Rao and Thyagaraju Adinarayan

Hat tip to Rabobank for their description of yesterday’s session – “Tidings of comfort and joy”.

Those tidings consisted of more positive news on the coronavirus vaccine front, on Brexit talks and on a possible bipartisan U.S. spending package proposal of almost $1 trillion.

The joy — stocks and bitcoin notched up fresh highs — while the dollar lost ground to touch 2-1/2 year lows.

Some of the air has been let out today, with U.S. and European equities opening a touch lower and Treasury yields flat after yesterday’s 8 basis-point rise. Inflation-adjusted U.S. 10-year yields are around 1.8%, the highest since May 2019.

But the mood overall remains buoyant — not least led by massive merger and IPO deals. The latest is Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM)’s deal to buy workplace messaging app Slack in a $27.7 billion deal, coming on top of an even bigger plan by S&P Global (NYSE:SPGI) on Monday to buy IHS Markit for $44 billion.

More stimulus is on the way too — aside from the U.S. package, Bank of Japan’s deputy governor said the bank could extend a corporate funding facility beyond March.

Finally, news from Britain — it became the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine with plans to roll it out from next week.

On Brexit, EU chief Brexit negotiator Barnier is to update EU representatives at a briefing – sterling is hovering around $1.34 on news talks have entered the so-called tunnel stage.

Here are some corporate events and data that could drive markets on Wednesday:

– Debenhams to shut all its shops, marking the end of its 242-year run in UK retail

– French perfume maker Interparfums ups sales outlook slightly. Low cost airline Wizz reported an 85% drop in November passenger numbers

– Bitcoin takes another shot at scaling $20,000

– U.S. Federal Reserve Releases Beige Book

– ECB’s Philip Lane to speak at the online Thomson Reuters Global Investment Summit