U.S. stock-index futures rose on Wednesday amid persisting hopes for a quicker-than-expected global economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic with working vaccine and a rebound in technology stocks after sharp declines earlier this week.

Global Stocks:

FXStreet points out that Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their vaccine has shown a 90% efficacy rate in its Phase 3 trial. The news helped power a significant rally in global stocks. The S&P 500 was up 1.2%, after hitting a record high earlier in the session. Despite Monday's significant rally, economists at UBS continue to believe that stocks will move higher from here. 

“The market reaction underlines our recent message that investors need to diversify for the next leg, toward more cyclical parts of the market that have lagged behind in 2020, and away from big tech and the primary stay-at-home beneficiaries. We have said that the next leg up in stocks would be driven by an end to US political uncertainty and sustainable mobility gains backed by a vaccine. Developments in the past week support our view.”

“The better-than-expected efficacy data increases the chances of achieving our upside scenario, in which social activity fully normalizes by 2Q21 and developed countries' GDP returns to pre-pandemic levels by end-2021.”

“The S&P 500 is moving closer toward our central scenario target of 3,700 by June 2021. However, in our upside scenario, we would expect to see the S&P 500 trading at 3,900 by June. Monday's data reduces the downside risk of no effective vaccine being developed in 2021 while making the upside scenario look more likely.”

“Planning market entry can be difficult when stocks hit record highs due to timing concerns. But reaching a record high in stocks is no obstacle to further gains. Since 1960, one-year returns after the S&P 500 has hit a high have been 11.8%, slightly more than the 11.3% average.”

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American Intl (AIG) downgraded to Neutral from Buy at Goldman; target raised to $39

Lyft (LYFT) reported Q3 FY 2020 loss of $0.89 per share (versus -$0.41 per share in Q3 FY 2019), being slightly better than analysts’ consensus estimate of -$0.90 per share.

The company’s quarterly revenues amounted to $0.500 bln (-47.7% y/y), beating analysts’ consensus estimate of $0.489 bln.

LYFT rose to $38.33 (+6.32%) in pre-market trading.