“The desire for more, the fear of missing out, the tendency to compare against others, the influence of the crowd and the dream of the sure thing—these factors are near universal. Thus they have a profound collective impact on most investors and most markets. The result is mistakes, and those mistakes are frequent, widespread and recurring.”
― Howard Marks

1. Data From Gilead Virus-Drug Trial ‘Good News’ — Gilead gave a shot in the arm to markets with positive data from a drug trial for its Covid-19 treatment, remdesivir. Infectious-disease expert Anthony Fauci said the early results offered “quite good news.” The FDA plans to announce emergency-use authorization for the drug as early as Wednesday, the NYT said. As for a vaccine, the Trump administration is organizing a Manhattan Project-style effort to develop one and have 100 million doses ready by year-end, people familiar said.
Operation Warp Speed will unite pharmaceutical companies, government agencies and the military in an aim to cut the development time by as much as eight months.
2. Job Losses Deepen in Pandemic With U.S. Tally Topping 30 Million — Millions more Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, sending the six-week total above 30 million since the coronavirus pandemic began to shutter businesses across the country. Initial jobless claims totaled 3.84 million in the week ended April 25 following 4.44 million in the prior week, according to Labor Department figures Thursday. Economists had projected 3.5 million claims.
3. Roche Covid-19 Antibody Test Gets Emergency FDA Approval — The Swiss giant expects production of the test to reach the high double-digit millions by June and pass the 100 million monthly threshold later this year. The test looks for antibodies in blood that have been raised to fight off the virus that causes Covid-19. Roche’s version runs on a high-volume instrument that can produce a single result in 18 minutes and as many as 300 results in an hour, the company said in a statement Sunday after receiving emergency authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
4. Trump Presses to Reopen U.S. — Trump repeated his aim that the U.S. would have a coronavirus vaccine by year’s end, an extremely ambitious deadline that the president said doctors have urged him not to promote. He also said the economy would fully rebound in the fourth quarter of 2020 and the beginning of next year. In a virtual town hall staged symbolically at the Lincoln Memorial Sunday evening, Trump said he hopes to return to his raucous political rallies in packed arenas in the final months of his campaign for re-election. He complained that some states “aren’t going fast enough” to ease public health restrictions.

The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com:

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