Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Hooker Furniture Climbs After Strong Q4 Results; Resources Connection Shares Slide

Toward the end of trading Thursday, the Dow traded up 0.12 percent to 20,672.71 while the NASDAQ rose 0.14 percent to 5,872.47. The S&P also rose, gaining 0.18 percent to 2,357.08.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Thursday afternoon, 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 Sunoco LP SUN.

In trading on Thursday, telecommunications services shares fell 0.29 percent. Meanwhile, top losers in the sector included China Unicom (Hong Kong) Limited (ADR) CHU, down 6 percent, and Internet Initiative Japan Inc. (ADR) IIJI, 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

Superconductor Technologies, Inc. SCON shares shot up 15 percent to $1.68. Rodman & Renshaw upgraded Superconductor Technologies to Buy.

Shares of Sunoco LP SUN got a boost, shooting up 21 percent to $28.76 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 27 percent to $39.80 after the company reported strong results for its fourth quarter.

Equities Trading DOWN

Synacor Inc SYNC shares dropped 18 percent to $3.42. Synacor priced 5.715 million shares at $3.50 per share.

Shares of Resources Connection, Inc. RECN were down around 15 percent to $13.65 after the company posted downbeat quarterly results.

8Point3 Energy Partners LP CAFD was down, falling around 9 percent to $12.05. 8point3 Energy reported Q1 earnings of $0.03 per share on revenue of $9.9 million. First Solar announced plans to review alternatives for the sale of interest in 8point3 Energy Partners. Wells Fargo downgraded 8point3 Energy from Outperform to Market Perform.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 0.90 percent to $51.61 while gold traded up 0.49 percent to $1,254.60.

Silver traded up 0.32 percent Thursday to $18.25, while copper fell 0.80 percent to $2.66.

Eurozone

European shares closed mostly higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 gained 0.18 percent, the Spanish Ibex Index rose 1.12 percent, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index rose 0.22 percent. Meanwhile the German DAX rose 0.11 percent, and the French CAC 40 gained 0.58 percent while U.K. shares fell 0.39 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.

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