The stock market is ending 2020 at record highs, even as the virus surges and millions go hungry Hamza Shaban, Heather Long Trader Daniel Krieger signals a thumbs-up as he arrives at the New York Stock Exchange on May 26. (Mark Lennihan/AP) The U.S. stock market ended 2020 at all-time highs, enriching the wealthy and capping off a soaring comeback despite a deadly pandemic that has killed more than 340,000 Americans and left millions jobless and hungry. The S&P 500-stock index, the most widely watched gauge, is finishing the year up more than 16 percent. The Dow Jones industrial average and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 7.25 percent and 43.6 percent, respectively. The Dow and S&P 500 finished at record levels despite the public health and economic crises.
ASX to rise on overseas gains, $A recovers
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Australian shares are poised to rise in their Christmas Eve shortened session, amid broad gains in both Europe and mixed ones on Wall Street.
ASX futures were up 47 points or 0.7 per cent to 6612 near 8am AEDT. The local currency rebounded 0.7 per cent, rising as high as US75.91¢; the Bloomberg dollar spot index slipped 0.4 per cent.
Shares closed higher in Europe amid reports that progress has been made in Brexit talks with the potential for a pre-Christmas agreement being signed.
In New York, the Brexit news was bolstered by some selective reading of the latest batch of economic data, though early optimism faded. At the close, the Dow was up 114 points or 0.4 per cent. The S&P 500 edged 0.1 per centhigher, while the Nasdaq slipped into negative territory with a 0.3 per cent slide.
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Standing in the men’s room of a petrol stop just off Interstate 15, half an hour north of Las Vegas, a man in cowboy boots stomped to the urinal immediately to my right.
Unremarkable, but annoying as there were dozens of alternative spots in the otherwise empty room that he could have chosen to maintain our distance.
And he wasn’t wearing a mask.
When I went to wash my hands – taking the prescribed 20 seconds to be thorough – he made sure to stand at the basin to my immediate left, an unmistakable sneer on his moustached face.
It happened during a 5954-kilometre road trip this month from Washington DC to LAX ahead of a Christmas visit to Australia, and it was deliberate.
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