Futures mildly higher
Wall Street looks set to open slightly higher on Friday, thanks to a rally in technology stocks during the previous session.
As of 5:50 a.m. ET, futures tied to the blue-chip Dow indicated a gain of 21 points to 27,690. The S&P 500 futures added 1.32 points to 3,382.12 while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures were up 13.87 points to 11,491.12.
The Nasdaq rocketed up 118.49 points, or 1.06% on Thursday, offsetting a surprise rise in weekly jobless claims.
Shares of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) surged, pushing the broader market higher.
Uber and Lyft granted a temporally stay in California
Meanwhile, a California appeals court on Thursday afternoon prolonged the length of time Uber (NYSE: UBER) and Lyft (NASDAQ: LYFT) will have to adhere with an order requiring them classify their drivers as employees, rather than independent contractors.
The judge ordered the companies to prepare detailed plans for migrating their gig workers into employees and set October 13 as the date to hear arguments.
“The California court has granted our request for a further stay, so our rideshare operations can continue uninterrupted, for now,” Lyft said in a statement.
Uber and Lyft had threatened to suspend operations in the state if they were forced to comply with the order by Thursday at midnight. Both ride-sharing giants are supporting a ballot measure that would grant more protections to their drivers, but would not make them regular employees.
Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine candidate on track for regulatory approval in October
Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) and its partner BioNTech (NASDAQ: BNTX) have published positive results for the early-stage trial of their second coronavirus vaccine candidate, saying that the vaccine had fewer side effects than their first.
Both companies released a statement Thursday stating that the vaccine is on track to be submitted for regulatory review as early as October. The vaccine called BNT162b2 is already in advanced trials and its administration was well tolerated with mild to moderate fever in the trial participants.
Pfizer shares were up 1.34% to $39.24 in pre-market trading session on Friday, while those of BioNTech rose 6.43% to $70.53 each.
