Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Crude Oil Up Over 1%; Syros Pharmaceuticals Shares Slide

Toward the end of trading Thursday, the Dow traded up 0.25% to 27,071.95 while the NASDAQ rose 0.47% to 8,162.02. The S&P also rose, gaining 0.41% to 3,002.05.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Health care shares climbed 1% on Thursday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Aurora Cannabis Inc. ACB, up 6%, and AmerisourceBergen Corporation ABC, up 4%.

In trading on Thursday, information technology shares fell 0.2%.

Top Headline

Morgan Stanley MS reported better-than-expected Q3 EPS and sales results.

Morgan Stanley reported third-quarter earnings of $1.27 per share, which beat the analyst consensus estimate of $1.11 per share. The company reported sales of $10.03, versus expectations of $9.6 billion.


Equities Trading UP

Hepion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. HEPA shares shot up 53% to $3.8201 after the company announced the publication of a research article, "A Pan-Cyclophilin Inhibitor, CRV431, Decreases Fibrosis and Tumor Development in Chronic Liver Disease Models," in the peer-reviewed Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

Shares of Future FinTech Group Inc. FTFT surged 22% to $0.9003 after the company announced it regained compliance with Nasdaq periodic filing requirement.

Limelight Networks, Inc. LLNW shares gained 21% to $3.77 after reporting Q3 results. Limelight Networks posted Q3 earnings of $0.01 per share on sales of, $51.3 million.

Equities Trading DOWN

Waitr Holdings Inc. WTRH shares tumbled 44% to $0.6218 after the company announced that Jeff Yurecko, the company's current Chief Financial Officer, will resign from the position effective November 1, 2019.

Shares of Bionano Genomics, Inc. BNGO were down 45% to $1.57 after the company reported a 5.3 million share offering of common stock and warrants.

Syros Pharmaceuticals, Inc. SYRS was down, falling 31% to $6.93 after the company announced plans to discontinue development of SY-1365 intravenous CDK7 inhibitor to focus on SY-5609.

Commodities


In commodity news, oil traded up 1.2% to $54, while gold traded up 0.2% to $1,497.50.

Silver traded up 1% Thursday to $17.595, while copper rose 0.4% to $2.60.

Euro zone

European shares closed mostly lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 fell 0.1%, the Spanish Ibex Index fell 0.5%, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index declined 0.23%. Meanwhile, the German DAX dropped 0.12%, and the French CAC 40 slipped 0.42% while UK shares rose 0.2%

Economics

US housing starts dropped 9.4% to an annual rate of 1,256 thousand units in September. Building permits fell 2.7 percent to an annual rate of 1,387 thousand.

U.S. initial jobless claims rose by 4,000 to 214,000 in the week ended October 12. However, economists were expecting a reading of 212,000.

The Philadelphia Fed manufacturing index declined 6.4 points to a reading of 5.6 in October.

U.S. industrial production fell 0.4% for September, versus economists’ expectations for a 0.1% decline.

Domestic supplies of natural gas climbed 104 billion cubic feet for the week ended October 11, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported. However, analysts projected a gain of 108 billion cubic feet.

U.S. crude supplies rose 9.3 million barrels for the week ended October 11, the Energy Information Administration reported. However, analysts were expecting a gain of 4 million barrels. Gasoline supplies fell 2.6 million barrels, while distillate supplies declined 3.8 million barrels last week.

New York Federal Reserve Bank President John Williams is set to speak in New York at 4:20 p.m. ET.

Data on money supply for the recent week will be released at 4:30 p.m. ET.