Mid-Afternoon Market Update: US Stocks Turn Lower; Neptune Wellness Solutions Shares Spike Higher

Toward the end of trading Thursday, the Dow traded down 0.22% to 20,896.87 while the NASDAQ fell 0.44% to 7,328.27. The S&P also fell, dropping 0.01% to 2,470.27.

The U.S. is now the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic with the highest number of cases around the world. U.S. reported a total of 216,700 coronavirus cases with around 5,100 deaths. Italy reported a total of at least 110,500 confirmed cases and 13,100 deaths, while Spain confirmed a total of over 104,100 coronavirus cases. In total, there are at least 941,900 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with over 48,200 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Energy shares climbed 5% on Thursday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included WPX Energy, Inc. WPX, up 23%, and ProPetro Holding Corp. PUMP, up 24%.

In trading on Thursday, consumer discretionary shares fell 1.5%.

Top Headline

Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc WBA reported upbeat results for its second quarter.

Walgreens reported quarterly earnings of $1.52 per share, which beat the analyst consensus estimate of $1.46 per share. The company reported quarterly sales of $35.8 billion, which exceeded the analyst consensus estimate of $35.27 billion.


Equities Trading UP

Neptune Wellness Solutions Inc. NEPT shares shot up 19% to $1.21 after the company confirmed Thursday it has obtained approval from Health Canada to commence with the commercialization of its plant-based hand sanitizer products.

Shares of ION Geophysical Corporation IO got a boost, shooting 84% to $2.13 after the company reported announced preliminary Q1 revenue in the range of $56 million to 57 million.

ProPetro Holding Corp. PUMP shares were also up, gaining 24% to $2.77. President Trump said he expects Russia and Saudi Arabia to end their oil price war within a few days. Raymond James maintained ProPetro with an Outperform and lowered the price target from $7 to $5.

 

Equities Trading DOWN

Luckin Coffee Inc. LK shares tumbled 76% to $6.24 after the company withdrew previous financial statements and said its COO has been involved in fabricating transactions over the past year.

Shares of Golar LNG Partners LP GMLP were down 54% to $1.48 after the company announced a reduction in its quarterly common unit distribution and issued an operational update.

Safe-T Group Ltd SFET was down, falling 34% to $1.43. Safe-T priced its 450,000 ADS offering at $1.60 per ADS.

Commodities


In commodity news, oil traded up 16.2% to $23.60, while gold traded up 3% to $1,638.60.

Silver traded up 4.1% Thursday to $14.56, while copper rose 1.2% to $2.20.

Euro zone

European shares closed mostly higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 rose 0.42% the Spanish Ibex Index slipped 0.08%, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index gained 1.75%. Meanwhile, the German DAX gained 0.27%, and the French CAC 40 rose 0.33% while UK shares rose 0.47%.


Economics

U.S. trade deficit shrank 12.2% to $39.9 billion in February, versus revised $45.5 billion in January. Exports declined 0.4% to $207.5 billion, while imports slipped 2.5% to $247.5 billion.

Initial jobless claims surged by 6.65 million in the latest week, versus revised 3.34 million in the previous week.

U.S. factory orders were unchanged for February, versus a 0.5% drop in January.

Domestic supplies of natural gas dropped 19 billion cubic feet for the week ended March 27, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported. However, analysts were projecting a drop of 25 billion cubic feet.

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

Posted In: NewsEurozoneCommoditiesGlobalIntraday UpdateMarketsMid-Afternoon Market Update
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