Coronavirus: Apple, Tesla shares surge on positive COVID-19 vaccine report – The Mercury News

Bay Area business bellwethers such as Apple, Tesla and HP saw their share prices climb Monday as an upbeat report about a coronavirus vaccine trial spurred big gains across Wall Street.

Biotech company Moderna said Monday that an early stage trial of its coronavirus vaccine produced antibodies for COVID-19 in all 45 participants who took the medication over a month-and-a-half long period. It’s the first time a company has released data about the results of a coronavirus testing trial on humans.

Word of Moderna’s results spurred hope across Wall Street, as the blue chip Dow Jones Industrial Average soared by 672.11 points, or almost 3%, to 24,367.07. The broad-based S&P 500 climbed 2.7%, to 2,940.06, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index climbed almost 2%, to 9,183.59.

Among leading area companies, Tesla shares rose 3%, to $823.85. The electric carmaker was set to fully re-open its Fremont manufacturing plant after reaching an agreement with Alameda county last week. The company is also reportedly deciding between Austin, Texas and Tulsa, Oklahoma as the site for its next U.S. Gigafactory.

Apple shares were up by 1.5%, to trade at $312.18. On Friday, the Chinese government said it is considering putting Apple, Cisco Systems, Qualcomm and other U.S. companies on an “unreliable entity list” in response to the U.S. Commerce Department banning American semiconductor companies from shipping their chips to Chinese tech giant Huawei. The ban is seen as a meant to punish China for any role it may have had in the spread of coronavirus around the world.

Cisco shares rose by almost 1%, to $44.62, while HP was up by 5%, at $15.61 a share, Intel rose 2.4%, to $59.70 a share, Twitter shares climbed 2.3%, to $29.67 and Hewlett Packard Enterprise rose by almost 6%, to $9.65 a share.