Mid-Day Market Update: ASV Holdings Gains Following Merger News; Aclaris Therapeutics Shares Drop

Midway through trading Thursday, the Dow traded up 0.13% to 26,570.69 while the NASDAQ rose 0.68% to 7,963.66. The S&P also rose, gaining 0.43% to 2,926.42.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Financial shares rose 0.9% on Thursday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included OFG Bancorp OFG, up 12%, and 360 Finance, Inc. QFIN, up 8%.

In trading on Thursday, energy shares fell 0.1%.

Top Headline

Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc WBA posted upbeat earnings for its third quarter.

Walgreens Boots Alliance reported third-quarter earnings of $1.47 per share, which beat the analyst consensus estimate of $1.43. The company reported quarterly sales of $34.591 billion, which beat the analyst consensus estimate of $34.47 billion.

Equities Trading UP

Cemtrex, Inc. CETX shares shot up 123% to $4.0825 after the company's electronic manufacturing services unit won a $6 million in new orders over the last few months.

Shares of Adaptive Biotechnologies Corporation ADPT got a boost, shooting up 96% to $39.26 after pricing 15 million share IPO at $20 per share.

ASV Holdings, Inc. ASV shares were also up, gaining 281% to $6.74 after the company reported a merger deal with Yanmar Holdings at $7.05 per share in cash.

Equities Trading DOWN

XpresSpa Group, Inc. XSPA shares tumbled 59% to $1.9358 after a third amendment to outstanding secured convertible notes due November 17, 2019, resulting in added 941,000 shares to outstanding common stock count.

Shares of Aclaris Therapeutics, Inc. ACRS were down 46% to $2.4210 after the company reported Phase 2 Trial results for ATI-502 did not meet its primary or secondary endpoints.

Zynex, Inc. ZYXI was down, falling 19% to $8.48 after reporting a 16.66 million share common stock offering via selling shareholders.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 0.4% to $59.60, while gold traded down 0.4% to $1,410.40.

Silver traded down 0.7% Thursday to $15.185, while copper rose 0.1% to $2.716.

Euro zone

European shares were mostly lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 rose 0.01%, the Spanish Ibex Index fell 0.1%, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index gained 0.26%. Meanwhile, the German DAX gained 0.21%, and the French CAC 40 fell 0.2% while UK shares fell 0.19%.

Economics

The U.S. grew its gross domestic product by 3.1% in the first quarter of 2019, up from just 2.2% growth in the fourth quarter of 2018. Economists were projecting a growth of 3.1%.

Initial jobless claims rose 10,000 to 227,000 last week. However, analysts were expecting a reading of 220,000.

The pending home sales index rose 1.1% for May, versus economists’ expectations for a 1.1% increase.

Domestic supplies of natural gas climbed 98 billion cubic feet for the week ended June 21, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported. However, analysts projected a gain of 100 billion cubic feet.

The Treasury will auction 7-year notes at 1:00 p.m. ET.

Data on farm prices for May 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.