Dow Surges 300 Points; Johnson & Johnson Posts Upbeat Earnings

U.S. stocks traded mixed midway through trading, with the Nasdaq Composite declining over 1% on Thursday.

The Dow traded up 0.87% to 35,365.00 while the NASDAQ fell 1.11% to 14,198.86. The S&P 500, also fell, declining, 0.19% to 4,556.8.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

• Health care shares climbed by 1.2% on Thursday.
• In trading on Thursday, consumer discretionary shares fell by 2.1%.

Top Headline

Johnson & Johnson JNJ reported better-than-expected earnings and sales results for its second quarter.

Johnson & Johnson reported quarterly adjusted earnings of $2.80 per share, up 8.1% Y/Y and beating the consensus of $2.62. Sales increased 6.3% to $25.5 billion, beating the consensus of $24.63 billion.

Johnson & Johnson said it expects FY23 adjusted EPS of $10.70 - $10.80 compared to prior guidance of $10.60 - $10.70 and the consensus of $10.65. The company expects sales of $99.3 billion – $100.3 billion compared to the previous guidance of $97.9 billion – $98.9 billion and the consensus of $98.96 billion.

Equities Trading UP

• T2 Biosystems, Inc. TTOO shares shot up 17% to $0.1192 after the FDA granted Breakthrough Device designation for the company's Candida auris direct-from-blood molecular diagnostic test.
• Shares of Pasithea Therapeutics Corp. KTTA got a boost, shooting 19% to $0.5715 after the company rejected an unsolicited, non-binding acquisition proposal from Lucy Scientific Discovery. The company also authorized the repurchase of up to 5.7 million shares at $0.70/share.
• SigmaTron International, Inc. SGMA shares were also up, gaining 22% to $4.36 after the company reported results for the fourth quarter.

Equities Trading DOWN

• Vir Biotechnology, Inc. VIR shares dropped 44% to $12.97 after the company's Phase 2 PENINSULA trial of VIR-2482 for the prevention of symptomatic influenza A illness did not meet primary or secondary efficacy endpoints.
• Shares of Netcapital Inc. NCPL were down 40% to $0.7049 after the company announced pricing of a public offering.
• Aspira Women's Health Inc. AWH was down, falling 32% to $2.6995 after the company announced a registered direct offering of around 1.7 million shares at $2.75/share and $3.98/share for directors & officers, for gross proceeds of approximately $4.7 million.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 0.9% to $76.06 while gold traded down 0.3% at $1,974.30.

Silver traded down 0.5% to $25.27 on Thursday while copper rose 1.3% to $3.8620.

Euro zone

European shares were higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 rose 0.45%, London’s FTSE 100 gained 0.92% while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index rose 0.78% The German DAX gained 0.52% French CAC 40 rose 0.80% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index rose 0.46%.

The current account deficit in the Eurozone shrank to EUR 11.3 billion in May from EUR 29 million in the year-ago month. The manufacturing climate indicator in France came in unchanged at 100 in July. Annual producer inflation in Germany fell to 0.1% in June from 1% in May.

Italy posted a current account surplus of EUR 1.403 billion in May versus a year-ago deficit of EUR 1.542 billion. Spain’s trade gap shrank to €3.11 billion in May from €4.76 billion in the year-ago period.

Asia Pacific Markets

Asian markets closed mostly lower on Thursday, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 falling 1.23%, China’s Shanghai Composite Index falling 0.92% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index declining 0.13%. India’s S&P BSE Sensex, meanwhile, rose 0.7%.

The annual inflation rate in Hong Kong eased to 1.9% in June from 2% a month ago. The People's Bank of China held lending rates unchanged during its July fixing. Exports from Japan climbed by 1.5% year-over-year to JPY 8,744.06 billion in June, while imports declined by 12.9% year-over-year to JPY 8,701.01 billion.

Economics

• U.S. initial jobless claims declined by 9,000 from the earlier week to 228,000 in the week ending July 15, versus market expectations of 242,000.
• The Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index came in little changed at -13.5 in July compared to a reading of -13.7 in June.
• Existing home sales in the U.S. declined 3.3% to an annualized rate of 4.16 million units in June.

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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 107,412,810 cases with around 1,169,020 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 44,995,050 cases and 531,910 deaths, while France reported over 40,138,560 COVID-19 cases with 167,640 deaths. In total, there were at least 691,748,360 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,901,510 deaths.