Mid-Morning Market Update: Markets Open Lower; Dow Drops 70 Points

U.S. stocks traded lower this morning, with the Dow Jones dropping around 70 points on Monday.

Following the market opening Monday, the Dow traded down 0.22% to 32,125.87 while the NASDAQ fell 0.23% to 11,777.64. The S&P also fell, dropping, 0.18% to 4,016.79.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Energy shares jumped by 2.3% on Monday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Rattler Midstream LP RTLR, up 17% and Tidewater Inc. TDW up 12%.

In trading on Monday, consumer discretionary shares fell 0.8%.

Top Headline

The New York Empire State Manufacturing Index unexpectedly declined to -11.6 in May from 24.6 in April. Analysts, meanwhile, were expecting a reading of 17.

Equities Trading UP

Data Storage Corporation DTST shares shot up 49% to $3.4350 after the company reported better-than-expected Q1 financial results.

Shares of Faraday Future Intelligent Electric Inc. FFIE got a boost, shooting 25% to $3.0703. Faraday Future posted a FY22 loss of $2.21 per share, versus a loss of $0.94 per share in FY21.

iQIYI, Inc. IQ shares were also up, gaining 24% to $3.68. JP Morgan upgraded iQIYI from Underweight to Overweight and raised the price target from $2 to $8.

Equities Trading DOWN

Chimerix, Inc. CMRX shares tumbled 61% to $1.65. Emergent BioSolutions Inc EBS agreed to acquire Chimerix’s exclusive worldwide rights to Tembexa (brincidofovir), the first FDA-approved antiviral for all age groups for smallpox.

Shares of Iris Energy Limited IREN were down 36% to $4.97. The company recently posted downbeat quarterly sales.

Eliem Therapeutics, Inc. ELYM was down, falling 33% to $2.94 after the company reported a Q1 loss of $0.50 per share.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 1% to $109.38, while gold traded down 0.3% to $1,802.60.

Silver traded up 0.7% to $21.15 on Monday while copper rose 0.1% to $4.1755.

Euro zone

European shares were mixed today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 fell 0.2%, London’s FTSE 100 slipped 0.03% and Spain’s IBEX 35 Index rose 0.2%. The German DAX dropped 0.5%, French CAC 40 fell 0.2% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index gained 0.3%.

The Eurozone reported a trade gap of €16.4 billion for March, versus a year-ago surplus of €22.5 billion.

Economics

The New York Empire State Manufacturing Index unexpectedly declined to -11.6 in May from 24.6 in April. Analysts, meanwhile, were expecting a reading of 17.

The Treasury is set to auction 3-and 6-month bills at 11:30 a.m. ET.

The Treasury International Capital report for March will be released at 4:00 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 84,230,820 cases with around 1,026,670 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 43,123,800 cases and 524,240 deaths, while Brazil reported over 30,688,390 COVID-19 cases with 664,960 deaths. In total, there were at least 521,354,660 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,288,630 deaths.