* Energy, materials rise
* Mastercard jumps on Stephens PT raise
* Wall Street indexes trading below all-time highs
* Dow up 0.22%, S&P 500 up 0.12%, Nasdaq up 0.20%
(Updates to mid-afternoon, changes byline)
By Chuck Mikolajczak
NEW YORK, Dec 30 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Wednesday
to hover just below record levels as investors bet on a strong
economic recovery in 2021 on the back of COVID-19 vaccine
rollouts and hopes for even more fiscal support.
Near-term expectations of bigger stimulus checks dimmed
after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked a quick
vote to back President Donald Trump's call to increase COVID-19
relief checks. McConnell then introduced a bill that tied
increased $2,000 stimulus checks with the removal of protections
for social media companies and a study on election security.
"It will be hard to get something passed with a lame duck
Congress, let the calendar roll over and see what happens there.
It seems like McConnell is just trying to play kick the can
until we get a new Congress in place and see what happens," said
JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade in Chicago.
Optimism over vaccine rollouts was boosted after Britain
approved the emergency use of AstraZeneca AZN.L and Oxford
University's COVID-19 vaccine, which will start being
administered on Monday. That was tempered somewhat by the first known U.S. case of a
highly infectious coronavirus variant discovered in Britain that
was now detected in Colorado. "At some point we are going to start to have volatility
again that is related to COVID, this is not a story that is
going away in the first six months of 2021," said Kinahan.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 67.62 points,
or 0.22%, to 30,403.29, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 4.61 points,
or 0.12%, to 3,731.65 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added
25.96 points, or 0.2%, to 12,876.18.
The last few weeks of the year have seen a shift towards
undervalued stocks that are primed to benefit from an economic
recovery next year, with sectors such as banking, energy and
materials outpacing their peers.
Heavyweight technology shares, the most sought-after this
year, were sold off in the rush towards cyclicals.
Trading volumes were subdued and are expected to be low in
the final two days of the year, which has been a roller-coaster
ride for equities.
The S&P 500 index .SPX is up nearly 16% on the year, after
trillions of dollar in fiscal and monetary stimulus and progress
in developing vaccines helped the benchmark index bounce back
more than 65% from its March 23 closing low.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq .IXIC , which was the first among
Wall Street's main indexes to turn positive for the year, is
also set for its best yearly performance since 2009, with
majority of gains led by FAANG stocks - Apple Inc AAPL.O ,
Facebook Inc FB.O , Amazon.com Inc AMZN.O , Netflix Inc
NFLX.O and Alphabet Inc GOOGL.O .
Despite the modest gains, nearly all of the 11 major S&P
sectors were higher, with only consumer staples .SPLRCS and
communication services .SPLRCL in negative territory.
Shares of payments network processor Mastercard Inc MA.N
rose 2.6% after Stephens hiked its price target on the stock on
hopes of improving cross-border sentiment. U.S. travel-related stocks rose as stimulus aid and starting
of mass inoculations sparked hopes of a recovery for the
industry that has been among the hardest hit in pandemic-fueled
restrictions.
The S&P 1500 airlines index .SPCOMAIR added 1.04%, while
cruise operators Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd NCLH.N ,
Carnival Corp CCL.N and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd RCL.N
each rose by at least 1%.