Covid vaccine rally fuels market optimism of a faster global recovery

News of potentially effective vaccine helps persuade politicians to keep policies to prevent lay offs and bankruptcies

The timing could hardly have been better. In the week that the daily number of US Covid-19 cases relentlessly hit new records and just days after England followed much of the rest of Europe into lockdown, Pfizer and BioNTech announced their vaccine was 90% effective against the virus.

The news came too late to prevent a new hit to growth in the final three months of 2020. Nor will it be enough to prevent the central banks in the US and the eurozone from piling in with fresh stimulus packages in the weeks to come.