US Stocks Open Lower; Dow Dips 250 Points

U.S. stocks traded lower this morning, with the Dow Jones dropping around 250 points on Wednesday.

Following the market opening Wednesday, the Dow traded down 0.74% to 33,484.47 while the NASDAQ fell 1.87% to 11,122.61. The S&P 500 also fell, dropping, 1.26% to 3,966.28.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

• Health care shares fell by just 0.3% on Wednesday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Fennec Pharmaceuticals Inc. FENC, up 6%, and MSP Recovery, Inc. LIFW, up 6%.
• In trading on Wednesday, information technology shares tumbled by 2.2%.

Top Headline

• AT&T Inc T reported better-than-expected Q4 earnings.

AT&T reported fourth-quarter FY22 operating revenues of $31.34 billion, up 0.8% year-over-year, marginally missing the consensus of $31.39 billion. Adjusted EPS of $0.61 beat the consensus of $0.57.

AT&T expects adjusted FY23 EPS of $2.35 - $2.45, below the consensus of $2.56.

Equities Trading UP

• First Wave BioPharma, Inc. FWBI shares shot up 41% to $6.22 after the company announced expansion of adrulipase intellectual property portfolio.
• Shares of eHealth, Inc. EHTH got a boost, shooting 28% to $6.92 after the company raised its preliminary FY22 revenue guidance.
• Stride, Inc. LRN shares were also up, gaining 22% to $39.00 after the company announced better-than-expected Q2 results.

Equities Trading DOWN

• Precigen, Inc. PGEN shares tumbled 28% to $1.5816 after the company reported pricing of $75.0 million public offering of common stock.
• Shares of Grom Social Enterprises, Inc. GROM were down 24% to $2.43 after the company reported pricing of $3.0 million private placement priced at-the-market per Nasdaq rules.
• Extreme Networks, Inc. EXTR was down, falling 20% to $15.46 after the company posted upbeat Q2 results. Extreme Networks also announced that CFO Rémi Thomas will leave the company.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 0.1% to $80.06 while gold traded down 0.2% at $1,932.20.

Silver traded down 0.4% to $23.665 on Wednesday while copper fell 0.2% to $4.2395.

Stocks of crude oil in the US climbed by 3.378 million barrels during the latest week, the American Petroleum Institute reported.

Euro zone

European shares were lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 fell 0.6%, London’s FTSE 100 fell 0.4% while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index fell 0.2%. The German DAX declined 0.3% French CAC 40 fell 0.4% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index fell 0.4%.

The Ifo Business Climate indicator for Germany increased by 1.6 points from a month ago to 90.2 in January. The producer price inflation in Spain eased to 14.7% year-over-year in December versus a revised 20.5% in the prior month.

UK’s producer inflation increased by 14.7% year-over-year in December.

Asia Pacific Markets

Asian markets closed mixed on Wednesday, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 adding 0.35% and India’s S&P BSE Sensex dropping 1.3%. Many Asian markets were closed for the Lunar New Year holidays.

Singapore’s annual inflation rate fell to 6.5% in December from 6.7% in the prior two months, while food prices rose by 7.5% year-over-year. The index of leading economic indicators in Japan fell to 97.4 in November compared to preliminary reading of 97.6, while index of coincident economic indicators rose to99.3 in November versus a flash reading of 99.1. The annual inflation rate in Australia increased to 7.8% in Q4 from 7.3% in the prior quarter.

Economics

Mortgage applications in the US increased 7% in the week ended Jan. 20, 2023, versus a 27.9% rise in the prior period.

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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 103,907,430 cases with around 1,129,610 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 44,682,200 cases and 530,730 deaths, while France reported over 39,492,830 COVID-19 cases with 164,000 deaths. In total, there were at least 673,835,660 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,750,150 deaths.