Traders can be a fickle lot.

The euphoria surrounding a possible Covid-19 vaccine at the onset of the week are being subdued, with investors showing some mid-week love for tech stocks. On Wednesday, the Nasdaq 100 index far outperformed other US benchmark indices, gaining 2.3 percent on the day which essentially erased all the losses from the day prior.

However, the tech-heavy index continues to bear a week-to-date decline of 1.64 percent, which is in contrast to the gains seen in the Dow Jones index and the S&P 500 for the same period.

At the time of writing, US equity futures are marginally lower, with investors left slightly stunned after having to contend with several cross-currents across global markets this week already. Traders are still net long on the US Tech 100 (Mini), according to the FXTM Trader’s Sentiments.

First there was the elation in US stock markets at the prospects of a divided US government, with the elections being called in Joe Bidens favour over the weekend. Then there was the breakthrough claim by Pfizer and BioNTech SE about the existence of a Covid-19 vaccine that can prevent over 90 percent of infections. Such news prompted a rotation into value stocks which had been beaten down by the pandemic, at the expense of growth stocks (i.e. Big Tech).

Now, doubts are starting to take hold over the vaccine’s true efficacy and its timeline for the global rollout. Should the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine be approved, the companies said they’ll only be able to produce about 25 million doses this year. The world clearly needs more than that.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday conveyed her assumption that Germany’s second wave will be tougher, potentially setting up a winter-long battle against the coronavirus. US President-elect Joe Biden also this week reiterated his comments used during last month’s presidential debate, warning that Americans face a “very dark winter” amid the pandemic. Such foreboding raises the risk of another national shutdown in the US once Biden is inaugurated on January 20th, if the number of Covid-19 cases in the States isn’t stemmed by then. Such a scenario was also highlighted by Hussein Sayed, FXTM Chief Market Strategist (Gulf & MENA), in the first-ever episode of FXTM’s podcast: Markets Extra (be sure to subscribe).

With such concerns creeping back in, no surprise that US 10-year Treasury yields are pulling further below the psychologically-important 1% level as trading resumed today after a mid-week break. That in turn is allowing the Dollar index (DXY) to hang on to most of its week-to-date gains and hang around the 93 psychological level for the time being.

However, later Thursday, the Greenback would have to take into account the October US inflation print, as well as the latest weekly jobless claims data. The CPI data isn’t expected to yet show a significant risk of overshooting inflationary pressures in the US, while the weekly jobless claims are set to remain stubbornly high at around 731,000. Should any of these economic readings deviate significantly from market expectations, that could prompt sizeable moves in the DXY.