Good Evening. Here is everything you need to know about today’s recap on the in’s and out’s of the major market and economic events.
Stocks extended their losses from Thursday, as fears of a rapid tightening of financial conditions grew in the wake of multi-decade high inflation. New geopolitical tensions between Russia and Ukraine dragged on markets even more, sending oil prices to a seven-year high.
During a bumpy session on Friday, the S&P 500(-1.90%), Dow(-1.43%), and Nasdaq(-2.78%) all sank. Stocks plummeted to session lows on Friday afternoon as the United Kingdom issued a warning to British nationals to leave Ukraine as tensions with Russia escalated. After breaking above 2% for the first time since August 2019 a day earlier, the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield began to fall.
VACCINE
Pfizer (PFE) and BioNtech (BNTX) stated on Friday that their request for the FDA to approve their COVID-19 vaccination for children under the age of five has been postponed. Before the FDA reconsiders the jab’s approval, the companies must complete their ongoing clinical research and get efficacy results on a third dose of the shot for youngsters.
“Given that the study is advancing at a rapid pace, the companies will wait for the three-dose data as Pfizer and BioNTech continue to believe it may provide a higher level of protection in this age group,” Pfizer said in its press statement. “This is also supported by recent observations of three-dose booster data in several other age groups that seem to meaningfully augment neutralizing antibody levels and real-world vaccine protection for omicron compared to the two-dose regimen. The companies expect to have three-dose protection data available in early April.”
REST STATIONS
The most cutting-edge highway rest station right now is one that contains both a toilet and a Subway. However, upgrades may be on the way across the country: The Biden administration unveiled plans for a $5 billion interstate highway network of electric vehicle (EV) chargers.
The money will be distributed to states over the following five years, according to the program unveiled by the Departments of Energy and Transportation. The objectives are to standardize charging systems and to meet Biden’s goal of 500,000 public EV stations by 2030. (there are currently about 116,000, highly concentrated in California).
The interstate stations must meet certain criteria in order to receive funding:
- Be installed every 50 miles.
- Be less than a mile away from an interstate.
- At least four charging ports with a minimum of 150 kilowatts per port (i.e. 30–45 minutes of charging time to charge up) should be available.
Zoom out: According to a recent survey, one-in-five electric vehicle drivers have switched back to gas due to the difficulty of finding charging stations.