US STOCKS- Wall St hits record highs as vaccine trial results raise hopes

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* Airlines, cruise operators soar on vaccine trial news
* Oil, energy and bank shares jump
* Stay-at-home stocks underperform
* Dow up 4.54%, S&P 2.69%, Nasdaq up 0.12%

(Updates to late afternoon, adds commentary; changes byline,
adds New York dateline)
By Sinéad Carew
NEW YORK, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Wall Street's three major
indexes hit record highs on Monday as the first positive data
from a late-stage COVID-19 vaccine trial prompted hopes that an
economic recovery from the pandemic-driven crisis was finally in
sight.
Oil prices surged more than 8% and pushed up energy stocks
while U.S. Treasuries sold off after U.S. drugmaker Pfizer
PFE.N and its German partner BioNTech BNTX.O said a
large-scale trial of their vaccine showed it was more than 90%
effective in preventing COVID-19. O/R US/
Saturday's news that Joe Biden had won the U.S. presidential
election was also a reassuring confirmation of what investors
had already been counting on by the end of last week, according
to market strategists.
"Election uncertainty is fading into the rearview mirror.
Now we have this boost of investor enthusiasm after the vaccine
news," said to Michael Antonelli, market strategist at Baird in
Milwaukee. "All the types of companies that would benefit from
us returning to a pre-COVID world are the big winners today."
Sectors such as energy, travel and financials which were
among the hardest hit by lockdowns aimed at curbing the virus
were the biggest percentage gainers on Monday. While the vaccine study is still ongoing, Pfizer and
BioNTech said they had found no serious safety concerns so far
and expected to seek U.S. emergency use authorization later this
month. "It's not that we're out of the woods with COVID. It's that
the vaccine starts to remove the worst case scenario that we
surge out of control and go back into a national lockdown," said
Antonelli. "The market's looking into the future, to the first
and second quarter of next year."
At 2:42 p.m. EST (1942 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial
Average .DJI rose 1,265.57 points, or 4.47%, to 29,588.97, the
S&P 500 .SPX gained 94.72 points, or 2.70%, to 3,604.16 and
the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 12.37 points, or 0.1%, to
11,907.60.
The S&P energy index .SPNY , up 15%, was on course for its
biggest daily percentage gain since March as investors bet
demand would climb again when people become more comfortable
with the idea of traveling as the health crisis subsides.
Also, bank shares .SPXBK , often seen as a proxy for the
broader economy, jumped about 14%.
The companies hit hardest by months of travel bans and
lockdowns soared. the NYSE airlines index .XAL was up 19%
while plane maker Boeing Co BA.N jumped 15%. Cruise line
operator Carnival Corp CCL.N was up more than 32%.
In contrast, the technology sector and specific companies
that had outperformed during the pandemic as they were seen as
"stay-at-home" winners were making smaller gains or declining.
Netflix Inc NFLX.O fell 6.6% and Amazon.com Inc AMZN.O
2.8%, while Zoom Video ZM.O fell more than 14% and exercise
bike maker Peloton Interactive Inc PTON.O> plunged 15.6%,
limiting the Nasdaq's .IXIC .
Stocks around the world scaled a record high earlier in the
day and the dollar remained weak as expectations of better
global trade ties and more monetary stimulus under
President-elect Biden also lifted demand for risky assets.
MKTS/GLOB
Biogen Inc BIIB.O slumped about 27.7% as a panel of
experts to the U.S. health regulator voted against the drugmaker
experiment Alzheimer's treatment. Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a
4.12-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.44-to-1 ratio favored advancers.
The S&P 500 posted 140 new 52-week highs and 1 new lows; the
Nasdaq Composite recorded 244 new highs and 23 new lows.