The S&P 500 and Nasdaq jumped 7.5% and 9%, last week, while the Dow rose 7%. The S&P 500 posted its biggest election week gain since 1932.  This morning US Stocks are sharply higher led by the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer who says that their COVID vaccine is 90 percent effective.

This week investors will be eyeing earnings season which is beginning to wind down, but there are still dozens of companies reporting, including McDonald’s, Disney, Applied Materials and Cisco. As of Friday, about 89% of S&P 500 companies had already reported third-quarter earnings results. Of these, 86% of them reported a positive earnings per share surprise. If this proportion carries through the remainder of earnings season, it will mark the highest percentage of upside earnings surprises for S&P 500 companies since FactSet began tracking the measure in 2008.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway said their operating earnings came in at $5.478 billion, down more than 30% from the year-earlier period.  As the coronavirus pandemic weighs on their operating earnings and stock price, Berkshire Hathaway ramped up their stock repurchasing program even more in the third quarter, nearly doubling the record buyback from the second quarter.  Warren Buffett’s conglomerate bought back $9 billion of its own stock.