Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Dow Turns Higher; Signet Jewelers Shares Plunge

Toward the end of trading Thursday, the Dow traded up 0.10 percent to 24,230.91 while the NASDAQ climbed 0.24 percent to 7,051.77. The S&P also rose, gaining 0.28 percent to 2,623.41.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Thursday afternoon, the materials shares rose 0.9 percent. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Nexa Resources S.A. NEXA up 6 percent, and Sibanye Gold Limited SBGL up 7 percent.

In trading on Thursday, communication services shares fell 0.1 percent.

Top Headline

Morgan Stanley MS reported a top-and-bottom line miss in its fourth quarter.

Morgan Stanley said it earned 80 cents per share in the fourth quarter on revenue of $8.548 billion versus expectations of 92 cents per share on revenue of $9.43 billion.

Net income during the quarter improved from $643 million from the same quarter last year to $1.5 billion although this quarter's performance included an intermittent net discrete tax benefit of $111 million and last year's income included a similar benefit of $1 billion.

Equities Trading UP

Lipocine Inc. LPCN shares got a boost, shooting up 28 percent to $2.0400 following the release of results from a study evaluating LPCN 1144, its pipeline asset for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH. Lipocine announced Thursday that eight-week top-line, interim results from an ongoing 16-week liver fat imaging study of LPCN 1144 showed an absolute mean reduction from the baseline of 7. 6-percent liver fat and a 38-percent relative mean liver fat reduction from baseline.

Shares of Correvio Pharma Corp. CORV shot up 34 percent to $3.0500 after the company said it does not plan to sell more shares through its at-the-money offering.

LM Funding America, Inc. LMFA shares were also up, gaining 52 percent to $2.1600 after acquiring IIU, a medical insurance product company.

Equities Trading DOWN

Signet Jewelers Limited SIG shares dropped 23 percent to $25.67 after the company reported a weak same store sales growth outlook for Q4.

Shares of Earthstone Energy, Inc. ESTE were down 21 percent to $5.34. Earthstone reported FY18 sales volume of 9,930 barrels of oil equivalent/day, up 26 percent year over year. The company expects FY19 average daily production of 11,000-12,000 barrels of oil equivalent/day.

Insteel Industries, Inc. IIIN was down, falling around 13 percent to $21.36 after reporting Q1 earnings. Insteel Industries reported Q1 profit of $4.1 million on revenue of $104.1 million.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 0.88 percent to $51.85 while gold traded down 0.09 percent to $1,292.70.

Silver traded down 0.59 percent Thursday to $15.545, while copper rose 0.36 percent to $2.683.

Eurozone

European shares closed mostly lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 gained 0.04 percent, the Spanish Ibex Index fell 0.05 percent, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index slipped 0.04 percent. Meanwhile the German DAX dropped 0.12 percent, and the French CAC 40 fell 0.34 percent while U.K. shares fell 0.4 percent.

Economics

The Philly Fed's manufacturing index rose to 17.00 for January, versus December reading of 9.10. However, economists were expecting a reading of 9.70.

Initial jobless claims fell 3,000 to 213,000 in the latest week. Economists were projecting a reading of 219,000.

Domestic supplies of natural gas dropped 81 billion cubic feet for the week ended January 11, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported. However, analysts expected a fall of 73 billion cubic feet.

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