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Investing.com — U.S. stock markets opened the week higher as the number of new infections of Covid-19 across the U.S. fell to its lowest in two months, strengthening hopes that the worst of the pandemic’s effects on the economy are past.
According to Johns Hopkins data, there were only 34,567 new cases on Sunday. While that reflects the usual dip reported at weekends due to delays in data compilation, it’s less than half the peak rate of new infections seen two months ago.
By 9:45 AM ET (1345 GMT) the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 133 points or 0.5% at 28,063 points. The S&P 500 was up 0.8% and the Nasdaq Composite was up 1.3%
Megacap stocks were again outperforming, with Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) stock rising 3.7% on the back of a report by The Wall Street Journal that implicitly confirmed the strength of its lobbying power. The paper reported that CEO Mark Zuckerberg had lobbied actively for U.S. measures against ByteDance, the Chinese owner of video-streaming app TikTok that is one of its biggest competitors in the social media marketplace.
In addition, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock rose 2.6%, shrugging off news that Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has lent its support to Epic Games, the owner of Fortnite, which is suing to uphold its rights not to pay 30% commissions to the iPhone maker on in-app purchases made through its App Store.
