This was a banner week for the U.S. and the world. The first COVID-19 vaccine shots were administered in the U.S., with millions more rolling out as we speak. That's undeniably great news... and, perhaps, it's the beginning of the end of this long pandemic nightmare. But it's also a vaccine for the markets, one that may prevent a major correction anytime soon. That's despite the fact that stock market valuations - the ratio of stock prices to earnings - are near all-time highs, a situation that often suggests that stocks are overly expensive and a correction may be coming. Interestingly, though the news of the vaccine rollout was widely expected and not a surprise to anyone, it still drove stocks up. Usually, such expected events are baked into asset prices before they occur and don't move stock prices much when they happen. But the rollout is such unalloyed, joyful news that markets were buoyed by it anyway. Take a look at the sea of green (green indicates price increases - the brighter the better) in the S&P 500 on Monday morning from one of my favorite market trackers, Finviz. The vaccine rollout, in addition to the potential for another huge stimulus bill out of Congress, drove investors to move money that has been on the sidelines back into risk assets like stocks. As a result, almost all sectors were up, with the exception of energy stocks, which have been struggling for a decade as investors try to predict the future of fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas. You'll also notice that some healthcare stocks were down Monday morning, including Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), the maker of the first COVID-19 vaccine now being rolled out. That seems counterintuitive, but, in fact, it makes a lot of sense. Keep in mind that Pfizer rose almost 27% from the beginning of November through last week. So the minor pullback in it, and in a few other biotech stocks, is most likely due to investors taking some profits on the huge gains they've recently realized. That is, they're selling some of their Pfizer shares to realize the huge gains of the past month. Not a bad strategy. It's very likely that as the vaccine continues to roll out and life gradually returns to normal, which will take several months at least, investors will rotate the sectors they're investing in. So we may begin to see a move out of the stay-at-home tech stocks that benefited from the pandemic, like Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX), and into sectors that have been hurt by the pandemic. Those include small cap stocks, which aren't deemed as "safe" as the Big Tech stocks. They also include cruise lines, hotels and restaurants, among others. The bottom line is that we may now be seeing the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel - and that's welcome news for all. Enjoy your weekend and stay safe, Matt | 
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