US equity and bond markets were CLOSED for the Thanksgiving Day holiday and will open for a half-day of trading tonight AEST. It is also Black Friday tonight AEST, the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season in the US.

A top executive at AstraZeneca Plc (down -0.6%) pushed back against criticism that the company failed to disclose enough data from a clinical trial of its COVID-19 vaccine earlier this week, and acknowledged scepticism about the vaccine's 90% effectiveness in a group of patients who were accidentally given a lower dose than intended. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Pascal Soriot confirmed to Bloomberg that the British pharmaceutical giant was likely to run an additional global trial to evaluate the efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine.