Mid-Morning Market Update: Markets Open Higher On Easing Russia-Ukraine Tensions

US stocks opened on a strong note this morning after Russia announced it would pull back some troops positioned on the Ukrainian border.

Following the market opening Tuesday, the Dow traded up 1.05% to 34,930.47 while the NASDAQ rose 1.49% to 13,996.63. The S&P also rose, gaining, 1.19% to 4,453.99.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Consumer discretionary shares climbed 1.7% on Tuesday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included TAL Education Group TAL, up 20% and Yunji Inc. YJ up 14%.

In trading on Tuesday, energy shares tumbled by 2.1%.

Top Headline

Marriott International, Inc. MAR reported better-than-expected results for its fourth quarter.

Marriott International reported quarterly earnings of $1.30 per share, exceeding market estimates of $0.99 per share. The company’s quarterly sales came in at $4.45 billion, versus estimates of $3.98 billion.

Equities Trading UP

Tower Semiconductor Ltd. TSEM shares shot up 42% to $46.99. Intel Corp INTC agreed to acquire Israeli chip company Tower Semiconductor for $53 per share in cash, representing a total enterprise value of $5.4 billion.

Shares of Sabre Corporation SABR got a boost, shooting 19% to $10.69 after reporting upbeat quarterly sales.

TAL Education Group TAL shares were also up, gaining 19% to $3.7050.

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Equities Trading DOWN

Larimar Therapeutics, Inc. LRMR shares tumbled 55% to $3.7650 after the company reported the FDA stated it is maintaining its clinical hold at this time on Larimar's CTI-1601 program and that additional data is needed to resolve the clinical hold.

Shares of Allot Ltd. ALLT were down 19% to $7.95 after the company reported worse-than-expected Q4 EPS results.

Medpace Holdings, Inc. MEDP was down, falling 16% to $146.18. Medpace’s Q4 revenue increased 18.8% Y/Y to $308.6 million, missing the consensus of $309.04 million.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 4.8% to $90.84, while gold traded down 0.9% to $1,852.20.

Silver traded down 2.8% Tuesday to $23.185 while copper rose 0.2% to $4.5160.

Euro zone

European shares were higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 gained 1.3%, London’s FTSE 100 rose 0.8%, while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index rose 1.4%. The German DAX gained 1.7%, French CAC 40 jumped 1.6% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index climbed 1.8%.

Labor productivity in the UK rose 1% on quarter in the final three months of 2021, while the number of people in work dropped by 39,000 on quarter to 32.485 million in the same period. The UK unemployment rate came in at 4.1% in the fourth quarter Spanish annual inflation rate eased to 6.1% in January from around 30-year high of 6.5% in December.

Economics

Producer prices rose 1% month-over-month in January following a revised 0.4% increase in December.

The New York Empire State Manufacturing Index climbed to 3.1 in February from -0.7 in January.

The Treasury International Capital report for December will be released at 4:00 p.m. ET.

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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 79,520,660 cases with around 946,180 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 42,692,940 cases and 509,380 deaths, while Brazil reported over 27,541,130 COVID-19 cases with 638,910 deaths. In total, there were at least 414,378,670 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 5,846,930 deaths.