Gold Gains 1%; Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index Falls In December

U.S. stocks traded higher midway through trading, with the Dow Jones index gaining around 80 points on Wednesday.

The Dow traded up 0.22% to 37,626.76 while the NASDAQ rose 0.06% to 15,084.02. The S&P 500 also rose, gaining, 0.06% to 4,777.57.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Consumer discretionary shares jumped by 0.3% on Wednesday.

In trading on Wednesday, information technology shares fell by 0.4%.

Top Headline

The Manufacturing Activity Index in the Richmond area fell to -11 in December, recording the lowest reading in ten months and versus a reading of -5 in the prior month.

Equities Trading UP

First Wave BioPharma, Inc. FWBI shares shot up 153% to $9.30 after the company announced that it entered a non-binding term sheet to sell its Niclosamide program for the treatment of inflammatory bowel diseases.

Shares of Cytokinetics, Incorporated CYTK got a boost, surging 71% to $78.12 after the company announced topline results from SEQUOIA-HCM, the Phase 3 clinical trial of aficamten in patients with symptomatic obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Coherus BioSciences, Inc. CHRS shares were also up, gaining 22% to $2.6650 after the company reported the FDA approval of UDENYCA ONBODY for pegfilgrastim-cbqv.

Equities Trading DOWN

Hallmark Financial Services, Inc. HALL shares dropped 33% to $1.05.
Hallmark Financial Services gave notice to Nasdaq of intention to voluntarily delist its shares of common stock from Nasdaq Global Market.

Shares of Bluejay Diagnostics, Inc. BJDX were down 16% to $2.1855. Bluejay Diagnostics announced initiation of multicenter clinical study evaluating symphony IL-6 in sepsis patients.

Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. IOVA was down, falling 21% to $6.99 after the FDA placed a clinical hold on the IOV-LUN-202 trial in response to a recently reported Grade 5 adverse event potentially related to the non-myeloablative lymphodepletion pre-conditioning regimen.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 0.7% to $75.07 while gold traded up 1% at $2,089.60.

Silver traded up 1% to $24.63 on Wednesday while copper rose 1.7% to $3.9690.

Euro zone

European shares were higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 rose 0.09%, London’s FTSE 100 rose 0.39% while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index rose 0.10% The German DAX rose 0.13% French CAC 40 rose 0.03%, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index gained 0.17%.

Asia Pacific Markets

Asian markets closed higher on Wednesday, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 gaining 1.13%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index rising 1.74% and China’s Shanghai Composite Index gaining 0.54%. India’s S&P BSE Sensex, meanwhile, rose 0.98%.

Japan's housing starts fell by 8.5% year-over-year in November following a 6.3% decline in the earlier month. Profits earned by Chinese industrial firms fell by 4.4% year-over-year to CNY 6,982.28 billion during the first eleven months of the year. Producer prices in Malaysia fell by 1.5% year-over-year in November.

Economics

The Manufacturing Activity Index in the Richmond area fell to -11 in December, recording the lowest reading in ten months and versus a reading of -5 in the prior month.

The US Fifth District Survey of Service Sector Activity's revenues index fell to 0 in December compared to November’s reading of 1.

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