Mid-Day Market Update: U.S. Stocks Turn Lower; LexinFintech Shares Spike Higher

Midway through trading Thursday, the Dow traded down 0.33 percent to 25,648.21 while the NASDAQ declined 0.05 percent to 7,884.91. The S&P also fell, dropping 0.17 percent to 2,857.02.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

On Thursday, the utilities shares rose 0.31 percent. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Kenon Holdings Ltd. KEN up 2 percent, and Huaneng Power International, Inc. HNP up 2 percent.

In trading on Thursday, materials shares fell 0.84 percent.

Top Headline

Hormel Foods Corp HRL reported in-line earnings for its third quarter, while sales missed estimates. The company also lowered its FY18 sales guidance.

Hormel Foods posted quarterly earnings of $0.39 per share on revenue of $2.359 billion. However, analysts were expecting earnings of $0.39 per share on revenue of $2.38 billion.

Hormel now projects FY18 sales of $ $9.4 billion to $9.6 billion, versus earlier forecast of $9.7 billion to $10.10 billion.

Equities Trading UP

LexinFintech Holdings Ltd. LX shares shot up 24 percent to $13.83 after reporting upbeat quarterly earnings.

Shares of Raven Industries, Inc. RAVN got a boost, shooting up 12 percent to $45.75 after the company reported strong Q2 results.

Lantronix, Inc. LTRX shares were also up, gaining 10 percent to $4.65 after reporting a fourth-quarter earnings beat.

Equities Trading DOWN

Cato Corporation CATO shares dropped 17 percent to $19.68 after the company reported Q2 results.

Shares of Stein Mart, Inc. SMRT were down 10 percent to $2.7368. Stein Mart posted Q2 loss of $0.02 per share on sales of $310.94 million. Comps were up 0.7 percent year-over-year and the company said it anticipates low single-digit comps growth in the second half of the year.

Puxin Limited NEW was down, falling around 8 percent to $14.57. Puxin posted a Q2 loss of $0.16 per share.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 0.38 percent to $67.60 while gold traded down 0.65 percent to $1,195.50.

Silver traded down 1.28 percent Thursday to $14.66, while copper fell 0.61 to $2.677.

Eurozone

European shares were lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 dropped 0.17 percent, the Spanish Ibex Index fell 0.13 percent, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index fell 0.44 percent. Meanwhile the German DAX slipped 0.16 percent, and the French CAC 40 slipped 0.02 percent while U.K. shares fell 0.15 percent.

Economics

Initial jobless claims dropped 2,000 to 210,000 in the latest week. However, economists projected a 215,000 reading.

The IHS U.S. flash services PMI declined to 55.2 for August, versus prior reading of 56. The manufacturing flash PMI dropped to 54.5 in August from 55.3.

New home sales report fell 1.7 percent to an annual rate of 627,000 for July.

Domestic supplies of natural gas increased 48 billion cubic feet for the week ended August 17, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported.

Data on money supply for the recent week will be released at 4:30 p.m. ET.