S&P 500 Down More Than 1%; Bed Bath & Beyond Shares Plummet

U.S. stocks traded lower toward the end of trading, with the Nasdaq Composite dropping over 250 points on Friday.

The Dow traded down 0.85% to 33,711.05 while the NASDAQ fell 2.04% to 12,701.42. The S&P 500 also fell, dropping, 1.27% to 4,229.18.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Health care shares climbed 0.7% on Friday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Axsome Therapeutics, Inc. AXSM, up 39% and Summit Therapeutics Inc. SMMT up 21%.

In trading on Friday, consumer discretionary shares fell by 2%.

Top Headline

Deere & Company DE reported worse-than-expected Q3 EPS results.

Deere reported third-quarter FY22 net sales and revenue growth of 22% year-over-year to $14.1 billion, beating the consensus of $12.78 billion. EPS increased to $6.16, missing the consensus of $6.69.

Equities Trading UP

• GigaCloud Technology Inc GCT shares shot up 175% to $43.17 on continued volatility following the company's IPO on Thursday.
• Shares of Aeglea BioTherapeutics, Inc. AGLE got a boost, shooting 71% to $0.8638 after the company announced a marketing authorization application for pegzilarginase for the treatment of Arginase 1 deficiency has been submitted to and successfully validated by the European Medicines Agency.
• Volcon, Inc. VLCN shares were also up, gaining 64% to $3.01 after the company announced it has received over $100 million of pre-production orders for the Stag.

Equities Trading DOWN

• Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. BBBY shares tumbled 38% to $11.47 after an amended 13D filing showed Ryan Cohen has a 0% stake in the company.
• Shares of Capstone Green Energy Corporation CGRN were down 39% to $2.4101 after the company announced the pricing of a public offering of 2,934,498 shares valued at approximately $8 million.
• Accelerate Diagnostics, Inc. AXDX was down, falling 36% to $1.5899 after the company announced the pricing of a public offering of 17,500,000 shares valued at approximately $35 million.

Also check out: Investor Optimism Decreases Slightly As Fear & Greed Index Remains In Neutral Zone

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 1.1% to $91.45, while gold traded down 0.5% to $1,763.30.

Silver traded down 2.1% to $19.065 on Friday while copper rose 0.8% to $3.6620.

Euro zone

European shares closed mostly lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 fell 0.77%, London’s FTSE 100 rose 0.11% while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index fell 1.09%. The German DAX dropped 1.12%, French CAC 40 fell 0.94% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index fell 1.96%.

The Eurozone’s current account surplus shrank to EUR 3.2 billion in June from EUR 27.6 billion in the year-ago month. Annual producer inflation in Germany climbed to a fresh record high of 37.2% in July from 32.7% in the previous month.

Retail sales in the UK increased 0.3% over the prior month in July beating market expectations for a 0.2% decline, while GfK consumer confidence indicator in the country dropped to -44 in August versus -41 in July.

Economics

The total number of active U.S. oil rigs came in unchanged at 601 rigs this week, Baker Hughes Inc reported.

Check out this: U.S. Stocks End Slightly Higher But Market Volatility Increases

COVID-19 Update

The U.S. has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world, reporting a total of 95,186,070 cases with around 1,064,780 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 44,314,610 cases and 527,250 deaths, while France reported over 34,299,680 COVID-19 cases with 153,420 deaths. In total, there were at least 599,199,900 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,466,970 deaths.