Wall Street Opens Mostly Higher, Awaiting Stimulus Breakthrough; Dow up 120 Pts

By Geoffrey Smith 

Investing.com — U.S. stock markets opened  mostly higher on Wednesday but were essentially range-bound as haggling over a Coronavirus relief bill continued with no visible end in sight. 

By 9:45 AM ET (1445 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 140 points, or 0.4%, at 30,294 points. The S&P 500 was up 0.3% and the Nasdaq Composite was up a little less than 0.1%.

In the absence of major economic data or – for the most part – corporate earnings, attention was focused on the week’s two blockbuster IPOs. DoorDash priced its offering at $102 per share late on Tuesday, raising $3.37 billion and giving itself a valuation of some $39 billion, more than twice the valuation at its last private fund-raising round before the pandemic.

Rental company AirBnB is expected to price its IPO later Wednesday, and is also projected to secure a valuation north of $40 billion – a remarkable turnaround after it was forced into an emergency capital raising by the pandemic earlier in the year.

Developments on Capitol Hill continue to dominate the macro narrative, with Senate Leader Mitch McConnell offering to drop the two most contentious issues – liability protection for businesses and support for state and local governments – in order to allow a slimmed-down package to pass. House Democrats continue to back a bipartisan initiative worth a little over $900 million, by contrast. The issue was made more complex on Tuesday by a new proposal from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, which Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed on account of what she considered inadequate funds for enhanced unemployment benefits. 

Among early movers, FireEye (NASDAQ:FEYE) stock caught the eye for the wrong reasons, falling over 10% after the cybersecurity company said it had been hacked by what it strongly suspected were state-sponsored hackers. It didn’t mention which state it thought was behind the attack.

Penumbra (NYSE:PEN) stock managed only a modest 1.5% bounce after Tuesday’s heavy losses on the back of a short seller’s claims that cast doubt on the quality of the medical device company’s research and products.

Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) stock fell 1.2% and BioNTech (NASDAQ:BNTX) stock fell 2.4% a day ahead of an FDA committee meeting that is expected to approve their experimental vaccine for treating Covid-19. U.K. health authorities had overnight warned that people with allergies should not take the vaccine, after two U.K. healthcare professionals with allergies showed negative reactions to it. The two were said to be recovering well. Moderna  (NASDAQ:MRNA) stock, which has risen 65% in the last three weeks on hopes for a rapid rollout for its vaccine based on similar technology, fell 3.0%