It’s not going to be an upbeat start to trading on the ASX today. Without the usual lead from a holidaying Wall Street, the ASX 200 futures market was showing a 19 point dip for the start of trade on Friday just after 7 am.

A breather on Wall Street ahead of the Thanksgiving holidays should see the Australian market take a brief pause today on its quest to regain the losses triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns.

Wall Street rose Tuesday with the Dow making history by cracking the 30,000 point mark for the first time. By the close, the 30 stock measure had remained well over a level once considered a dream and consolidating the more than 400 point gain for the session.

The Australian sharemarket is heading for a solid start to Tuesday’s session, with futures up 41 points or 0.6% after more good news on a COVID-19 vaccine.

Investors took their foot off the pedal on Friday and the ASX 200 eased 0.1% to finish at 6,539.2. The market still rose 2.1% across the week for a third straight week of gains and extend November’s rally to 10.3% so far.

Normally Thanksgiving week in the US is usually a very festive time. But this year, COVID-19, Donald Trump’s increasingly erratic behaviour, weak economies (because of the pandemic), and growing uncertainty about 2021, has made the coming week and beyond more problematic.

A late afternoon downturn accelerated across Wall Street markets Wednesday as more bullish news on the success of the Pfizer COVID-19 virus (its 95% effective with all groups), was offset by the soaring toll of new infections, rising deaths and lockdowns.

In confusing trading, the S&P 500 and the Dow fell from record closing highs on Tuesday as fears over the continued surge in COVID-19 cases and tightening restrictions across more states undermined the confidence from two potentially successful vaccine candidates. On top of that weak retail sales data made investors realise the US consumer is running out of money.