U.S. stocks traded mostly higher toward the end of trading, with the Nasdaq Composite gaining more than 200 oints on Thursday.

The Dow traded down 0.02% to 32,793.29 while the NASDAQ rose 1.78% to 12,706.89. The S&P 500, also rose, gaining, 0.96% to 4,154.71.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

• Information technology shares rose by 4.4% on Thursday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA), up 27%, and Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMCI), up 24%.
• In trading on Thursday, energy shares fell 1.8%.

Top Headline

Best Buy Co Inc (NYSE:BBY) reported better-than-expected first-quarter earnings results.

Best Buy reported first-quarter FY24 sales decline of 11.1% year-on-year to $9.47 billion, missing the analyst consensus estimate of $9.52 billion. Non-GAAP EPS of $1.15 beat the analyst consensus of $1.11.

Equities Trading UP

• Beamr Imaging Ltd. (NASDAQ:BMR) shares shot up 117% to $4.7767 after NVIDIA announced the release of NVENC Video Codec SDK 12.1 showcasing the integration with Beamr CABR.
• Shares of Kubient, Inc. (NASDAQ:KBNT) got a boost, shooting 54% to $0.7471. Kubient and Adomni reported a definitive merger agreement
• Wearable Devices Ltd. (NASDAQ:WLDS) shares were also up, gaining 278% to $1.65 after the company announced its Mudra Band for Apple Watch is available for preorder.

Equities Trading DOWN

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 3.4% to $71.78 while gold traded down 1% at $1,944.10.

Silver traded down 1.4% to $22.905 on Thursday while copper rose 0.9% to $3.5935.

Euro zone

European shares were lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 fell 0.32%, London’s FTSE 100 fell 0.74% while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index fell 0.52% The German DAX declined 0.31% French CAC 40 fell 0.33% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index fell 0.44%.

German economy contracted by 0.3% in the first quarter, while GfK Consumer Climate Indicator rose for an eighth month in a row to -24.2 heading into June. Producer prices in Spain dropped 4.5% year-over-year in April versus a revised 1.4% decline in the prior month. The manufacturing climate indicator in France dropped for a third month to a reading of 99 in May.

Asia Pacific Markets

Asian markets closed mixed on Thursday, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 gaining 0.39%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index falling 1.93% and China’s Shanghai Composite Index dropping 0.11%. India’s S&P BSE Sensex rose 0.2%.

Singapore’s economy expanded by 0.4% year-over-year in the first quarter versus the flash reading of 0.1%.Singapore's current account surplus fell to SGD 29.45 billion during the first quarter from SGD 34.43 billion in the year-earlier period.

Economics

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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 107,066,660 cases with around 1,164,710 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 44,988,420 cases and 531,850 deaths, while France reported over 40,066,340 COVID-19 cases with 167,270 deaths. In total, there were at least 689,218,760 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,882,150 deaths.