Market Snapshot: Stock futures point to a softer Wall Street start after a volatile start to Christmas week

Read: Why growth and dividend stocks will be hot items for 2022, along with these super-productive companies

What’s driving the markets?

Tuesday’s rally marked the best daily percentage gain for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite since Dec. 7, and gains more than made up for Monday’s selloff. But the Wall Street rebound was followed up by mostly lackluster trading in Asia and Europe so far.

Investors took heart Tuesday from comments by President Joe Biden, who rolled out a plan to tackle the highly contagious omicron coronavirus variant, with 500 million free testing kits and a promise there would be no March 2020-style lockdowns.

Bloomberg reported Wednesday that the Biden adminstration plans to stockpile 400 million COVID treatments.

“Stock traders believe the new strain’s consequences will be short-lived and less damaging to the American economy. This is because corporate balance sheets are on solid footing, and investors believe that the United States will be able to navigate through this period unharmed,” said Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at AvaTrade, in a note to clients.

Medical experts in South Africa have said a noticeable recent drop in new COVID-19 cases could signal the omicron-driven surge has passed its peak. That, of course, doesn’t mean waves in other countries will follow that pattern.

And the holiday season remains complicated by the new variant that is causing case spikes in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. Dr. David Powell, physician and medical adviser to the International Air Transport Association, warned that the new variant increases the risk of catching COVID-19 during a flight by two or three times, in an interview with Bloomberg that published late Tuesday.

COVID jitters also caused Twitter
TWTR,
+3.21%,
Amazon
AMZN,
+2.00%
and Facebook parent Meta
FB,
+2.69%
to cancel appearances at the CES 2022 in Las Vegas in January.

Read: Canceling your Christmas travel plans because of COVID-19? How to avoid wasting time — and money

Economic data showed U.S. third-quarter gross domestic product revised to growth of 2.3% from a previous 2.1%. The Conference Board’s consumer confidence survey and existing home sales are scheduled for release at 10 a.m. Eastern. Thursday will see another big data dump.

Read: API data show U.S. crude-oil inventories down 3.7 million barrels last week: sources

What companies are in focus?

• Shares of Tesla
  TSLA,
  +4.29%
  rose over 3% in premarket trading after CEO Elon Musk said in a podcast interview that he’s sold enough stock to satisfy his tax requirements.

• BlackBerry shares
  BRBY,
  +1.29%
  rose in the extended session Tuesday after better-than-expected results from the cybersecurity and internet of things company’s quarterly results came in better than expected.

How are other assets trading?

• The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note 
  TMUBMUSD10Y,
  1.463%
   was steady at 1.474%. Yields and debt prices move opposite each other.

• The ICE U.S. Dollar Index 
  DXY,
  -0.21%
  a measure of the currency against a basket of six major rivals, was about 0.1% higher.

• Oil futures rose , with the U.S. benchmark 
  CL00,
  +0.17%
   up 0.3% to $71.33 a barrel, while gold futures
  GC00,
  +0.23%
  rose 0.1% to $1,791.40 an ounce.

• Bitcoin 
  BTCUSD,
  -0.88%
  fell 0.3% to $46,686

• The Stoxx Europe 600 index 
  SXXP,
  +0.08%
  and London’s FTSE 100 
  UKX,
  -0.03%
   were each unchanged.

• The Shanghai Composite 
  SHCOMP,
  -0.07%
  rose 0.9%, while the Hang Seng Index
  HSI,
  +0.57%
   gained 0.5% and Japan’s Nikkei 225 
  NIK,
  +0.16%
  rose 0.1%.