Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Energy Stocks Fall 2%; US Fed Cuts Interest Rates

Toward the end of trading Wednesday, the Dow traded up 0.07% to 27,089.85, while the NASDAQ fell 0.03% to 8,274.08. The S&P also fell, dropping 0.03% to 3,035.84.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Utilities shares climbed 0.5% on Wednesday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included PG&E Corporation PCG, up 17%, and MDU Resources Group, Inc. MDU, up 4%.

In trading on Wednesday, energy shares fell 2.1%.

Top Headline

General Electric Company GE reported better-than-expected earnings for its third quarter.

The company reported EPS at 15 cents per share, which beat the analyst consensus estimate of 11 cents. Sales came in at $23.36 billion, ahead of the $22.93 billion estimate.

Equities Trading UP

• Shares of Big 5 Sporting Goods Corporation BGFV spiked 32.8% to $3.20, after the company reported a third-quarter earnings beat and announced strong full-year guidance.
• Green Dot Corporation GDOT shares climbed 28.1% to $33, after the company announced it had entered into an agreement with Walmart and will continue to serve as the issuing bank and program manager for the Walmart MoneyCard program for an additional period of 7 years.
• Shares of Tenable Holdings Inc TENB rose 22.8% to $27.50, after the company reported its third-quarter earnings ahead of the consensus estimate by 4 cents per share.

Equities Trading DOWN

• Cyclerion Therapeutics, Inc. CYCN shares nosedived 74.3% to $3.45, after the company announced that its CAPACITY Phase II proof-of-concept study of praliciguat in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) did not meet statistical significance on its primary endpoint.
• Shares of Quad/Graphics, Inc. QUAD declined 45.1% to $6.19 after the company announced disappointing third-quarter results and significantly lowered its full-year guidance.
• AMAG Pharmaceuticals, Inc. AMAG shares declined 24.9% to $10.00 on news that FDA experts had voted to pull the company’s premature-birth drug, Makena, from the market.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 1.1% to $54.94, while gold traded up 0.2% to $1,493.20.

Silver traded down 0.4% Wednesday to $17.76, while copper fell 0.7% to $ 2.671.

Euro zone

European shares were mostly down today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 rose 0.1%, the Spanish Ibex Index fell 1.3%, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index fell 0.2%. Meanwhile, the German DAX rose 0.04%, and the French CAC 40 rose 0.5% while UK shares were up 0.3%.

Economics

• Payroll processor ADP reported that 125,000 private-sector jobs were created in October.
• The U.S. economy expanded at an annual pace of 1.9% in the third quarter.
• The FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) lowered its benchmark funds rate by 25 basis points to a range of 1.5% to 1.75%, as was widely expected.