What happened
After a brief pullback on Tuesday, space tourism stock Virgin Galactic Holdings (SPCE 4.25%) resumed rising this morning and is up a strong 6.7% in 11:15 a.m. EST trading.
There's no new news to explain the rise, however.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
I mean that literally. One data point I've been watching closely in relation to Virgin Galactic stock these past few weeks is the incidence of new coronavirus infections in New Mexico, where Virgin Galactic's Spaceport America is located. New Mexico had imposed new workplace restrictions to control the virus spread, then modified them.
As new cases trended down, the prospects for Virgin Galactic successfully being able to conduct a scheduled test flight on Friday, Dec. 11, increased. Today, however, I'm at a loss to say which way the trend is heading, because citing "an outage in the state government internet network," New Mexico did not issue its usual daily update on new cases.
Now what
Still, that's not a negative for Virgin Galactic. Last we heard, the test flight was still moving forward, and New Mexico's governor was even hailing it as an "exciting announcement." Until we see new data that would change that scenario, it's best to assume the test flight will take place as planned, moving Virgin Galactic one step closer to the day when it can begin commercial operations and begin collecting revenue to sustain its business.
And to investors today, that alone sounds like pretty good news.
