By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets opened higher again on Tuesday as faith in an economic recovery next year gained traction, spurring fresh interest in beaten down cyclical stocks.
By 9:40 AM ET (1440 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 318 points, or 1.1%, at 29,909 points. The S&P 500 was up 0.6% and the NASDAQ Composite was again - relatively speaking - a laggard, flat on the day.
Stocks across the board reacted positively to the nomination of former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary by President-elect Joe Biden. Yellen is synonymous with the largely successful reflation of the U.S. economy after the Great Recession and investors expect her to commit again to an expansionary fiscal policy to overcome the current crisis, having argued for just that recently in a conference speech.
There was also some uplift from the latest sign that President Donald Trump is abandoning his efforts to cling on to the White House, despite his ongoing tweets to the contrary. In the wake of Michigan's decision to certify its election results on Monday, the president is now allowing Biden and his team access to the resources necessary for a smooth handover of power.
That all came against the backdrop of fresh evidence of the economy slowing down as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to notch new records for cases and hospital admissions on the eve of a Thanksgiving holiday that risks becoming a nationwide 'superspreader' event akin to the Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends earlier this year.
"We are almost to a vaccine (sic)," Surgeon General Jerome Adams told Fox News earlier. "We've got new remedies out there. We just need you, the American people, to hold on a little bit longer."
The Conference Board's consumer confidence index for November fell by more than expected, while the Richmond Federal Reserve's business survey also painted a picture of slowing output and demand.
Among the early movers, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) stock roared another 3.2% higher on a wave of upgrades from brokers who now appear to feel compelled to put out multiple "cases" for the stock that indulge the aggressive bullishness of the retail investors who have driven its rally this year. More fundamentally, Tesla is likely to be a net beneficiary of General Motors (NYSE:GM) signaling on Monday on that it will end its support for efforts to take away California's powers to 'gold plate' its emissions regulations. California's standards, tighter than the national average, have had the effect of creating a national standard all by themselves, at greater short-term cost to traditional carmakers.
Elsewhere, Boeing (NYSE:BA) stock rose 4.4% after EU regulators moved closer to allowing the 737 MAX back into the skies after an absence of 20 months.