* Energy, materials rise
* Britain OK's emergency use of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine
* Mastercard jumps on Stephens PT raise
(Updates to market close)
By Chuck Mikolajczak
NEW YORK, Dec 30 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks closed higher on
Wednesday as investors looked towards an improving economic
outlook 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 to $2,000 from $600 already signed into law.
McConnell introduced a bill that tied the increased $2,000
stimulus checks with the removal of protections for social media
companies and a study on election security.
"Something's better than nothing but there's a lot of
politics involved. The market is anticipating something, whether
$600 or $2,000 part of that is baked into the cake," said
Matthew Keator, managing partner in the Keator Group, a wealth
management firm in Lenox, Massachusetts.
"The markets are saying 'what have you done for me lately?'
and people are going to be focusing on what's going to happen if
we see more and more restrictions due to the pandemic."
Investors are also eyeing the Georgia run-off election on
January 5, which could lead to Democratic control of the Senate,
and upend the market view of political gridlock.
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. But 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. Unofficially, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose
73.89 points, or 0.24%, to 30,409.56, the S&P 500 .SPX gained
5 points, or 0.13%, to 3,732.04 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC
added 19.78 points, or 0.15%, to 12,870.00.
The last few weeks of the year have seen a shift towards
undervalued stocks that historically are the first to benefit
from an economic recovery, with sectors such as banking, energy
and materials outpacing their peers.
Heavyweight technology shares, the most sought-after this
year, weakened as investors rushed towards cyclical stocks.
Trading volumes were subdued and are expected to be low as
the year draws to close.
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 66% 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 energy .SPNY and materials .SPLRCM
the best performing.
Shares of payments network processor Mastercard Inc MA.N
rose after Stephens hiked its price target on the stock on hopes
of improving cross-border sentiment.