Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Crude Oil Down 1.6%; Papa Murphy's Shares Spike Higher

Toward the end of trading Thursday, the Dow traded down 0.26 percent to 26088.72 while the NASDAQ declined 0.35 percent to 7,936.24. The S&P also fell, dropping 0.15 percent to 2,883.82.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Thursday afternoon, the industrial shares rose 0.7 percent. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Yangtze River Port and Logistics Limited YRIV up 12 percent, and YRC Worldwide Inc. YRCW up 8 percent.

In trading on Thursday, health care shares fell 1.5 percent.

Top Headline

Fastenal Company FAST reported stronger-than-expected earnings for its first quarter.

Fastenal's first-quarter adjusted earnings came in at 68 cents per share on sales of $1.309 billion. However, analysts were expecting earnings of 67 per share on sales of $1.31 billion.

Equities Trading UP

Vital Therapies, Inc. VTL shares got a boost, shooting up 22 percent to $0.7160 after the company reported a smaller Q4 net loss from last year.

Shares of Future FinTech Group Inc. FTFT shot up 176 percent to $2.2197 after the company announced the establishment of a subsidiary to expand its chain cloud mall business.

Papa Murphy's Holdings, Inc. FRSH shares were also up, gaining 31 percent to $6.43 after the company announced it will be acquired by MYT Food Group for $6.45 per share.

Equities Trading DOWN

China Jo-Jo Drugstores, Inc. CJJD shares dropped 44 percent to $1.7300 after the company filed for a $60 million mixed shelf offering and announced a $10 million registered direct offering.

Shares of ATA Inc. ATAI were down 24 percent to $2.9200 in a potential sell off following a recent rally on news of the company entering into preliminary agreements to acquire a leading Chinese service provider.

SemiLEDs Corporation LEDS was down, falling around 18 percent to $3.67 after reporting second-quarter earnings. Earnings came in at $(0.24), up from $(0.32) year over year. Sales came in at $1.6 million, up from $1.543 million year over year. The company sees third-quarter sales of $1.6 million, plus or minus 10 percent.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 1.6 percent to $63.58 while gold traded down 1.5 percent to $1,293.90.

Silver traded down 2.3 percent Thursday to $14.89, while copper fell 1.2 percent to $2.89.

Eurozone

European shares closed mostly higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 gained 0.06 percent, the Spanish Ibex Index rose 0.41 percent, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index climbed 0.06 percent. Meanwhile the German DAX climbed 0.25 percent, and the French CAC 40 rose 0.66 percent while U.K. shares fell 0.05 percent.

Economics

Initial jobless claims dropped 8,000 to 196,000 last week. However, economists were projecting a reading of 211,000.

The Producer Price Index rose 0.6 percent for March, versus economists’ expectations for a 0.3 percent increase.

Domestic supplies of natural gas increased 25 billion cubic feet for the week ended April 5, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported. However, analysts expected a gain of 33 billion cubic feet.

Federal Reserve Member of the Board of Governors Michelle Bowman is set to speak in San Francisco, California at 4:00 p.m. ET.

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