Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Box Drops On Weak Forecast; Arcadia Biosciences Shares Gain

Toward the end of trading Thursday, the Dow traded down 0.06 percent to 25,969.24 while the NASDAQ declined 0.03 percent to 7,551.96. The S&P also fell, dropping 0.04 percent to 2,791.17.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Thursday afternoon, the real estate shares rose 1.3 percent. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Park Hotels & Resorts Inc. PK up 4 percent, and Braemar Hotels & Resorts, Inc. BHR up 4 percent.

In trading on Thursday, materials shares fell 1.2 percent.

Top Headline

J C Penney Company Inc JCP reported better-than-expected earnings for its fourth quarter.

J C Penney said it earned $0.18 per share in the fourth quarter on revenue of $3.79 billion versus expectations of $0.11 per share and $3.79 billion.

Equities Trading UP

Arcadia Biosciences, Inc. RKDA shares got a boost, shooting up 80 percent to $9.73 after announcing a new business unit dedicated to Cannabis.

Shares of Sequential Brands Group, Inc. SQBG shot up 30 percent to $1.5560 after the company announced a collaboration with Canopy Growth on a CBD product development.

Horizon Pharma Public Limited Company HZNP shares were also up, gaining 28 percent to $27.95 after the company said its phase 3 trials for active thryoid eye disease treatment met primary and all secondary endpoints.

Equities Trading DOWN

Novavax, Inc. NVAX shares dropped 67 percent to $0.7020 following the release oflate-stage study results for itsinvestigational vaccine candidate ResVax. Novavax said the global Phase 3 trial dubbed PREPARE that evaluatedResVax did not meet the primary endpoint of prevention of medically significant respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, and lower respiratory tract infection, or LTRI.

Shares of ORBCOMM Inc. ORBC were down 17 percent to $7.55 after reporting downbeat Q4 results.

Box, Inc. BOX was down, falling around 20 percent to $19.91 after the company reported downbeat revenue for its fourth quarter and issued weak first-quarter guidance.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 0.2 percent to $57.07 while gold traded down 0.3 percent to $1,316.70.

Silver traded down 0.6 percent Thursday to $15.67, while copper fell 0.5 percent to $2.9485.

 

Eurozone

European shares closed mostly higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 gained 0.06 percent, the Spanish Ibex Index rose 0.72 percent, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index gained 0.78 percent. Meanwhile the German DAX gained 0.25 percent, and the French CAC 40 rose 0.29 percent while U.K. shares fell 0.46 percent.

Economics

U.S. GDP grew at an annual pace of 2.6 percent in the fourth quarter, versus economists’ expectations for a 2.6 percent growth.

Initial jobless claims rose 8,000 to 225,000 in late February. However, economists were expecting a reading of 221,000.

The Chicago PMI rose 8 points to a reading of 64.7 for February.

Domestic supplies of natural gas dropped 166 billion cubic feet for the week ended February 22, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported. However, analysts projected a fall of 171 billion cubic foot.

Data on farm prices for January will be released at 3:00 p.m. ET.

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