Mid-Morning Market Update: Markets Mostly Flat; CarMax Profit Beats Estimates

Following the market opening Thursday, the Dow traded up 0.03 percent to 20,654.28 while the NASDAQ fell 0.02 percent to 5,863.21. The S&P also rose, gaining 0.05 percent to 2,354.05.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Thursday morning, the energy sector proved to be a source of strength for the market. Leading the sector was strength from Ballard Power Systems Inc. (USA) BLDP and Whiting Petroleum Corp WLL.

In trading on Thursday, telecommunications services shares fell 0.63 percent. Meanwhile, top losers in the sector included China Unicom (Hong Kong) Limited (ADR) CHU, down 7 percent, and Frontier Communications Corp FTR, down 2 percent.

Top Headline

CarMax, Inc KMX reported better-than-expected earnings for its fourth quarter.

CarMax reported Q4 earnings of $0.81 per share on revenue of $4.05 billion. Analysts expected earnings of $0.79 per share on revenue of $3.93 billion.

Equities Trading UP

Nova Lifestyle Inc NVFY shares shot up 57 percent to $2.43. Nova LifeStyle reported that student member sign ups on Blockchain-based Nova-Mart site topped 2,000 in March, up from 1,000 in February.

Shares of Sunoco LP SUN got a boost, shooting up 22 percent to $29.19 after the company agreed to sell majority of its convenience stores to 7-Eleven for $3.3 billion in cash.

Hooker Furniture Corporation HOFT shares were also up, gaining 21 percent to $38.00 after the company reported strong results for its fourth quarter.

Equities Trading DOWN

Synacor Inc SYNC shares dropped 13 percent to $3.62. Synacor priced 5.715 million shares at $3.50 per share.

Shares of Resources Connection, Inc. RECN were down around 13 percent to $14.00 after the company posted downbeat quarterly results.

China Auto Logistics Inc CALI was down, falling around 20 percent to $3.23 after climbing 54.89 percent on Wednesday.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 0.76 percent to $51.54 while gold traded up 0.50 percent to $1,254.80.

Silver traded up 0.13 percent Thursday to $18.21, while copper fell 0.45 percent to $2.67.

Eurozone

European shares were mostly lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 declined 0.06 percent, the Spanish Ibex Index rose 0.63 percent, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index fell 0.09 percent. Meanwhile the German DAX declined 0.11 percent, and the French CAC 40 gained 0.33 percent while U.K. shares fell 0.41 percent.

Economics

U.S. initial jobless claims declined 25,000 to 234,000 in the latest week. Economists were expecting jobless claims to total 250,000 in the week.

The Energy Information Administration’s weekly report on natural gas stocks is schedule for release at 10:30 a.m. ET.

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