Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Dow Climbs Over 300 Points; Nautilus Shares Slide On Weak Guidance

Toward the end of trading Friday, the Dow traded up 1.35 percent to 24,699.68 while the NASDAQ climbed 1.09 percent to 7,161.70. The S&P also rose, gaining 1.3 percent to 2,670.10.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Friday afternoon, the industrial shares rose 1.9 percent. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Daseke Inc DSKE up 8 percent, and Infrastructure & Energy Alternatives Inc IEA up 8 percent.

In trading on Friday, utilities shares fell 0.02 percent.

Top Headline

Tesla Inc TSLA announced plans to reduce its full-time workforce by 7 percent.

CEO Elon Musk said the job cuts are intended to cut Model 3 production costs — and ultimately the final sales price to the promised, competitive $35,000.

"Tesla will need to make these cuts while increasing the Model 3 production rate and making many manufacturing engineering improvements in the coming months," Musk said in an internal email.

Equities Trading UP

Ultra Petroleum Corp. UPL shares got a boost, shooting up 33 percent to $1.02 after a court ruling was reversed which would have forced the company to pay $400 million to creditors.

Shares of Bank OZK OZK shot up 15 percent to $31.78 after reporting a fourth-quarter earnings beat.

Moxian, Inc. MOXC shares were also up, gaining 95 percent to $0.7399 after the company announced a strategic partnership with Fujian.

Equities Trading DOWN

Nautilus, Inc. NLS shares dropped 38 percent to $7.31 after the company issued worse than expected Q4 and FY18 guidance.

Shares of Immunomedics, Inc. IMMU were down 26 percent to $13.38 after the company received a CRL from the FDA for its Sacituzumab Govitecan Biologics License Application.

Tyme Technologies, Inc. TYME was down, falling around 32 percent to $2.52 after the company announced disappointing data from its SM-88 study.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 3.02 percent to $53.64 while gold traded down 0.77 percent to $1,282.40.

Silver traded down 0.94 percent Friday to $15.39, while copper rose 1.34 percent to $2.716.

Eurozone

European shares closed higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 gained 1.8 percent, the Spanish Ibex Index rose 1.8 percent, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index jumped 1.22 percent. Meanwhile the German DAX climbed 2.63 percent, and the French CAC 40 rose 1.7 percent while U.K. shares rose 1.95 percent.

Economics

U.S. industrial production rose 0.3 percent for December, versus economists’ expectations for a 0.2 percent increase.

The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index dropped to 90.7 for January, versus prior reading of 98.3. However, economists were expecting a reading of 97.5.

The total number of active U.S. oil rigs slipped by 21 to 852 rigs this week, Baker Hughes Inc reported.