Mid-Morning Market Update: Markets Open Higher; Dow Jumps Over 600 Points

U.S. stocks opened on a strong note this morning, with the Dow Jones jumping more than 600 points on Wednesday.

Following the market opening Wednesday, the Dow traded up 1.98% to 33,279.38 while the NASDAQ rose 2.67% to 13,137.69. The S&P also rose, gaining, 2.16% to 4,260.88.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Financials shares climbed by 3.4% on Wednesday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Bright Health Group, Inc. BHG, up 22% and HCI Group, Inc.. HCI up 11%.

In trading on Wednesday, energy shares fell by 2.3%.

Top Headline

Campbell Soup Company CPB reported in-line earnings for its second quarter, while sales missed expectations.

Campbell Soup posted quarterly earnings of $0.69 per share, in-line with analysts’ estimates of $0.69 per share. The company’s quarterly sales came in at $2.21 billion, versus expectations of $2.24 billion.

Campbell said it sees FY22 adjusted EPS of $2.75-$2.85, versus analysts’ estimates of $2.79

Equities Trading UP

Bumble Inc. BMBL shares shot up 42% to $23.71 after the company reported Q4 results, which showed a 29% increase in Bumble App paying users. Bumble App revenue increased 42.2% year over year.

Shares of AST SpaceMobile, Inc. ASTS got a boost, shooting 39% to $9.41 after the company announced it has signed a multi-launch agreement with SpaceX for planned direct-to-cell phone connectivity.

Cano Health, Inc. CANO shares were also up, gaining 40% to $6.40 after Third Point reported in a 13D filing a 6.7% stake in Cano Health.

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Equities Trading DOWN

Natera, Inc. NTRA shares tumbled 28% to $39.28 after Hindenburg Research issued a short report on the stock.

Shares of Cricut, Inc. CRCT were down 28% to $10.03 after the company reported worse-than-expected Q4 sales results.

Cyren Ltd. CYRN was down, falling 23% to $7.97 after jumping over 45% on Tuesday.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 4.9% to $117.67, while gold traded down 2.1% to $1,999.60.

Silver traded down 1.4% Wednesday to $26.52 while copper fell 1.9% to $4.6195.

Euro zone

European shares were higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 rose 3.9%, London’s FTSE 100 gained 2.4%, while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index jumped 4.4%. The German DAX jumped 6.7%, French CAC 40 climbed 6% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index surged 5.8%.

Industrial production in Italy fell 3.4% from a month ago in January, while payroll employment in the France’s private sector increased by 0.6% to 20.06 million in the fourth quarter.

Economics

The number of job openings in the fell to 11.263 million in January versus a revised 11.448 million in the prior month.

US crude-oil inventories dropped 1.9 million barrels last week, the Energy Information Administration said.

The Treasury is set to auction 10-year notes at 1:00 p.m. ET.

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COVID-19 Update

The U.S. has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world, reporting a total of 81,012,950 cases with around 987,610 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 42,975,880 cases and 515,380 deaths, while Brazil reported over 29,144,960 COVID-19 cases with 652,930 deaths. In total, there were at least 450,186,760 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,037,860 deaths.