Following the market opening Thursday, the Dow traded up 0.39% to 36,629.16 while the NASDAQ rose 0.10% to 15,781.41. The S&P also rose, gaining 0.16% to 4,800.92.
The U.S. has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world, reporting a total of 54,656,860 cases with around 844,270 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 34,822,040 cases and 480,860 deaths, while Brazil reported over 22,263,830 COVID-19 cases with 618,870 deaths. In total, there were at least 285,031,830 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 5,441,370 deaths.
Leading and Lagging Sectors
Energy shares climbed 0.7% on Thursday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Amplify Energy Corp. AMPY, up 2% and Epsilon Energy Ltd. EPSN up 1.2%.
In trading on Thursday, consumer discretionary shares fell 0.2%.
Top Headline
US initial jobless claims dropped by 8,000 from the prior period to 198,000 in the week ending December 25. However, analysts were expecting a reading of 208,000.
Equities Trading UP
Energy Focus, Inc. EFOI shares shot up 30% to $5.70 after jumping over 11% on Wednesday. Energy Focus recently entered into definitive securities purchase agreements with institutional investors to sell 1.28 million shares of common stock and warrants to purchase up to 1.28 million shares, in combinations of one share (or one pre-funded warrant) and one warrant for a combined purchase price of $3.52.
Shares of uCloudlink Group Inc. UCL got a boost, shooting 16% to $5.11 after jumping over 15% on Wednesday.
Integrated Media Technology Limited IMTE shares were also up, gaining 16% to $5.24. Integrated Media Technology reported launching of NFT trading platform.
Check out these big movers of the day
Equities Trading DOWN
Vector Group Ltd. VGR shares tumbled 30% to $12.00. Vector Group said it has completed the spin-off of Douglas Elliman Inc. into a standalone, publicly traded company.
Shares of Pop Culture Group Co., Ltd CPOP were down 16% to $2.73 after climbing 41% on Wednesday.
Takung Art Co., Ltd. TKAT was down, falling 11% to $4.64 after jumping around 37% on Wednesday.
Commodities
In commodity news, oil traded up 0.5% to $76.96, while gold traded up 0.1% to $1,807.20.
Silver traded up 0.8% Thursday to $23.045 while copper rose 0.2% to $4.4230.
Euro zone
European shares were mostly higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 gained 0.2%, the Spanish Ibex Index rose 0.1% and the German DAX 40 dropped 0.01%. Meanwhile, the FTSE 100 slipped 0.02%, while French CAC 40 gained 0.2% and Italy’s FTSE MIB gained 0.1%.
Spain's annual inflation rate increased to 6.7% in December from 5.5% in the earlier month. House prices in the UK increased by 10.4% year-over-year in December following a 10% rise in the previous month.
Economics
US initial jobless claims dropped by 8,000 from the prior period to 198,000 in the week ending December 25. However, analysts were expecting a reading of 208,000.
The Chicago PMI rose to 63.1 for December from previous reading of 61.8.
The Energy Information Administration’s weekly report on natural gas stocks in underground storage is scheduled for release at 10:30 a.m. ET.
The Treasury is set to auction 4-and 8-week bills at 11:30 a.m. ET.
The Baker Hughes North American rig count report for the latest week will be released at 1:00 p.m. ET.
Data on farm prices for November will be released at 3:00 p.m. ET.
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