Mid-Day Market Update: Gold Down 1%; Clearside Biomedical Shares Jump

U.S. stocks traded mixed midway through trading, with the Nasdaq dropping around 100 points on Friday.

The Dow traded up 0.49% to 33,336.14 while the NASDAQ fell 0.73% to 13,032.47. The S&P also fell, dropping, 0.05% to 4,257.50.

Check out this: Insiders Buy Around $98M Of 3 Stocks

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Financials shares climbed by 0.6% on Friday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Puyi Inc. PUYI, up 8% and OppFi Inc. OPFI up 13%.

In trading on Friday, energy shares fell by 0.5%.

Top Headline

The Buckle, Inc. BKE reported better-than-expected results for its fourth quarter on Friday.

Buckle reported Q4 earnings of $1.69 per share, beating analysts’ estimates of $1.44 per share. The company’s quarterly sales came in at $380.93 million, versus expectations of $366.30 million.

Equities Trading UP

Clearside Biomedical, Inc. CLSD shares shot up 30% to $1.75 after the company reported better-than-expected Q4 results.

Shares of Lazydays Holdings, Inc. LAZY got a boost, shooting 26% to $22.46 after the company reported Q4 earnings results.

Altamira Therapeutics Ltd. CYTO shares were also up, gaining 36% to $0.9377. Altamira Therapeutics reported in vitro efficacy data for bentrio nasal spray in protecting against Sars-CoV-2 omicron variant.

Also check this: Cisco Systems And 3 Other Stocks Sold By Insiders

Equities Trading DOWN

RLX Technology Inc. RLX shares tumbled 35% to $1.53. RLX Technology reported fourth-quarter FY21 sales growth of 17.7% year-on-year, to $298.8 million (RMB1.9 billion), missing the consensus of $367.8 million.

Shares of DiDi Global Inc. DIDI were down 37% to $2.12 following a Bloomberg report titled 'Didi Global Said To Halt Hong Kong Listing Plan On Cybersecurity Probe.'

Orphazyme A/S ORPH was down, falling 40% to $0.7541 after the company announced it will institute a reduction of roughly 50% of its current work force and filed a petition for an in-court restructuring.

Also check out: Executives Buy Around $1M Of 5 Penny Stocks

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 2.8% to $108.99, while gold traded down 1% to $1,980.70.

Silver traded down 0.6% Friday to $26.10 while copper rose 0.1% to $4.6545.

Euro zone

European shares were higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 rose 1.22%, London’s FTSE 100 rose 0.89%, while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index rose 1.49%. The German DAX gained 1.86%, French CAC 40 gained 1.18% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index gained 1.08%.

Spanish inflation rate was revised higher to 7.6% in February versus a preliminary estimate of 7.4%. Annual inflation rate in Germany was confirmed at 5.1% in February.

Construction output in the UK expanded 9.9% year-over-year in January, following a 7.4% rise in the prior month, while trade deficit widened to GBP 16.159 billion in January from GBP 2.337 in the prior month. The British economy grew by 0.8% month-over-month in January, while industrial production increased 0.7% in January.

Economics

The University of Michigan consumer sentiment index dropped to 59.7 in March from 62.8 in the previous month.

The Baker Hughes North American rig count report for the latest week is scheduled for release at 1:00 p.m. ET.

Check out this: Executives Sell Over $50M Of 5 Stocks

COVID-19 Update

The U.S. has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world, reporting a total of 81,108,780 cases with around 991,260 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 42,984,260 cases and 515,740 deaths, while Brazil reported over 29,249,900 COVID-19 cases with 654,140 deaths. In total, there were at least 453,958,600 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,052,800 deaths.