U.S. stocks traded slightly higher midway through trading, with the Nasdaq Composite gaining 20 points on Thursday.

The Dow traded up 0.02% to 32,804.33 while the NASDAQ rose 0.17% to 11,595.87. The S&P 500 also rose, gaining, 0.06% to 3,994.51.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Top Headline

BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings Inc (NYSE:BJ) reported better-than-expected Q4 results.

BJ's Wholesale reported quarterly sales growth of 13.1% year-on-year to $4.93 billion, beating the consensus of $4.80 billion. Adjusted EPS of $1.00 beat the analyst consensus of $0.87.

Equities Trading UP

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 0.6% to $77.12 while gold traded up 0.9% at $1,834.40.

Silver traded up 0.5% to $20.26 on Thursday while copper rose 0.2% to $4.0335.

Euro zone

European shares were lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 fell 0.19%, London’s FTSE 100 fell 0.64% while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index fell 0.43%. The German DAX declined 0.02% French CAC 40 fell 0.08% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index fell 0.58%.

Payroll employment in the French private sector rose by 0.2% to 21.03 million during the fourth quarter, compared to a 87.6 thousand growth in the prior three-month period.

Asia Pacific Markets

Asian markets closed mostly lower on Thursday, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 gaining 0.63%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dropping 0.63% and China’s Shanghai Composite Index falling 0.22%. India’s S&P BSE Sensex dropped 0.9%.

Chinese annual inflation rate eased to 1.0% in February from 2.1% in the previous month, while producer prices declined 1.4% from a year ago in February. The Japanese economy grew by an annualized rate of 0.1% in the fourth quarter versus the preliminary figure of a 0.6% growth.

Economics

• US initial jobless claims climbed by 21,000 from the prior week to 211,000 in the week ending March 4, higher than market estimates of 195,000.
• US natural-gas supplies dropped 84 billion cubic feet last week, the EIA said.

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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 105,524,390 cases with around 1,148,090 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 44,688,690 cases and 530,770 deaths, while France reported over 39,639,110 COVID-19 cases with 165,070 deaths. In total, there were at least 681,090,770 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,808,370 deaths.