Mid-Morning Market Update: U.S. Stocks Mixed; Dollar Tree Reports Mixed Q4 Results

U.S. stocks opened mixed this morning, with the Dow Jones adding more than 200 points on Wednesday.

Following the market opening Wednesday, the Dow traded up 0.66% to 33,513.04 while the NASDAQ fell 0.06% to 13,524.80. The S&P also rose, gaining, 0.51% to 4,328.34.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Energy shares climbed by 2.1% on Wednesday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Borr Drilling Limited BORR, up 19% and Peabody Energy Corporation BTU up 12%.

In trading on Wednesday, communication services shares fell by 0.4%.

Top Headline

Dollar Tree Inc DLTR reported better-than-expected earnings for its fourth quarter, while sales missed estimates.

Dollar Tree Inc DLTR reported fourth-quarter FY21 sales growth of 4.6% year-on-year, to $7.08 billion, missing the consensus of $7.12 billion. EPS of $2.01 beat the consensus of $1.77.

Dollar Tree sees FY22 EPS of $7.60 - $8.00, against the consensus of $7.60. The company expects FY22 sales of $27.22 billion - $27.85 billion versus the estimate of $28.04 billion. Dollar Tree expects Q1 EPS of $1.95 - $2.10 versus the Street view of $1.66. It sees Q1 sales of $6.63 billion - $6.78 billion, against the consensus of $6.8 billion.

Equities Trading UP

Nordstrom, Inc. JWN shares shot up 32% to $25.87 after the company reported better-than-expected Q4 EPS and sales results. The company also issued FY22 guidance.

Shares of Arlo Technologies, Inc. ARLO got a boost, shooting 29% to $11.19 after the company reported better-than-expected Q4 results. The company also issued Q1 sales guidance above analyst estimates.

Organogenesis Holdings Inc. ORGO shares were also up, gaining 23% to $8.94 after the company reported Q4 EPS results up from last year and better-than-expected sales results.

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Equities Trading DOWN

SAB Biotherapeutics, Inc. SABS shares tumbled 43% to $2.63. SAB Biotherapeutics said that due to low hospitalization and death rates in the trial, the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) ACTIV-2 Program is discontinuing enrollment in its Phase 3 COVID-19 trial.

Shares of Karyopharm Therapeutics Inc. KPTI were down 30% to $7.32 after the company announced it received feedback from the FDA that the current SIENDO study top-line results are unlikely to support an sNDA approval.

a.k.a. Brands Holding Corp. AKA was down, falling 27% to $5.12 after the company issued Q1 sales guidance below analyst estimates.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 5.7% to $109.28, while gold traded down 0.6% to $1,931.50.

Silver traded down 1.3% Wednesday to $25.21 while copper rose 1.5% to $4.6695.

Euro zone

European shares were higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 gained 0.6%, London’s FTSE 100 rose 0.9%, while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index rose 1.4%. The German DAX gained 0.5%, French CAC 40 climbed 1% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index gained 0.4%.

Annual inflation rate in the Eurozone increased to a fresh record high of 5.8% in February from 5.1% in January. The unemployment rate in Germany fell to 5% in February from 5.1% in January. The number of people registered as unemployed in Spain declined by 11,394 from a month ago to 3.11 million during February.

French government budget deficit narrowed to EUR 15.9 billion in January from EUR 21.9 billion in the previous month. House prices in the UK surged by 12.6% year-over-year in February.

Economics

Private businesses hired 475,000 workers in February, the ADP said.

The Energy Information Administration’s weekly report on petroleum inventories in the U.S. is scheduled for release at 10:30 a.m. ET.

The Federal Open Market Committee will release its Beige Book report at 2:00 p.m. ET.

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Check out the full economic calendar here

COVID-19 Update

The U.S. has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world, reporting a total of 80,697,920 cases with around 977,400 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 42,938,590 cases and 514,240 deaths, while Brazil reported over 28,811,160 COVID-19 cases with 649,710 deaths. In total, there were at least 439,261,310 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 5,986,710 deaths.