ANOTHER ONE

Morderna’s publicly discussing its vaccine being 94.5% effective in trials. So we have efficacy for the first two vaccines out of the gate, now just waiting on the safety data. We’re going to break a quarter-million American deaths due to the plague at some point this week, so these vaccines couldn’t get here fast enough.

Up next is emergency use authorization, which the FDA will obviously grant, followed by news from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson about their vaccines. We’ll have a billion vaccine doses in the first half of next year to eliminate this f***ing thing from our lives. I’m gonna see a Bruce Springsteen show for the first time when this is over. I’d always been meaning to get around to it, just never have.

Anyway, long-term investors who’ve been able to tune out the macro medicine shows and Twitter daytrading gurus are reaping the rewards of their tenacity. Portfolio values will soon be echoing the record highs being printed in the major averages this morning. You don’t get those record portfolio value highs if you’ve been churning your accounts to butter over every twist and turn in the economic data. You can keep the butter, I guess.

The vaccine(s) came at an all-time high. Stocks had been rallying in anticipation and then the Pfizer news sprung from the top of the stage, like the deus ex machina we knew it would be. We’re getting vaccine news at record stock market highs, not at lows.

As I explained on the podcast this weekend, one of the toughest concepts for investors to wrap their heads around is the fact that stocks could be falling amid positive news and rising while negatives dominate the headlines. This is because the buyers and sellers are thinking about tomorrow and what will happen, not what just happened or even necessarily what’s happening now.

Looking forward, we’re going to get our lives back and the expansion’s now seeming like it’ll remain intact while the shots are administered.