Mid-Morning Market Update: Markets Open Lower; General Mills Posts Upbeat Earnings

U.S. stocks opened on downbeat note this morning, with the Dow Jones dropping more than 250 points on Wednesday.

Following the market opening Wednesday, the Dow traded down 0.80% to 34,527.50 while the NASDAQ fell 1.22% to 13,937.32. The S&P also fell, dropping, 0.82% to 4,474.81.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Energy shares jumped by 2.1% on Wednesday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Camber Energy, Inc. CEI, up 8% and Peabody Energy Corporation BTU up 9%.

In trading on Wednesday, information technology shares fell by 1.3%.

Top Headline

General Mills, Inc. GIS reported better-than-expected earnings for its third quarter and raised its FY22 outlook.

General Mills posted adjusted earnings of $0.84 per share, beating market expectations of $0.78 per share. The company’s quarterly sales came in at $4.54 billion, missing estimates of $4.56 billion.

General Mills boosted its FY22 organic net sales growth guidance from 4%-5% to 5%. It also expects adjusted per-share profit between flat and a growth of 2%, versus its prior range of a 2% drop to a 1% growth.

Equities Trading UP

4D pharma plc LBPS shares shot up 65% to $7.70 after the company announced the primary efficacy endpoint was met early in the renal cell carcinoma group in Part B of the study of MRx0518 and KEYTRUDA.

Shares of Zentek Ltd. ZTEK got a boost, shooting 28% to $3.4606. The stock began trading on the Nasdaq on Tuesday following an uplisting from the OTC Pink Sheets.

Allego N.V. ALLG shares were also up, gaining 20% to $9.98 after the company announced the completion of its merger agreement with Spartan Acquisition Corp., which resulted in 98% of the company notes redeemed at the merger vote. The company is also gaining retail investor interest.

Equities Trading DOWN

GAN Limited GAN shares tumbled 18% to $4.50 after the company reported worse-than-expected Q4 EPS and sales results. The company also issued FY22 sales guidance below analyst estimates.

Shares of Codex DNA, Inc. DNAY were down 18% to $7.56 after the company reported worse-than-expected Q4 EPS results.

Cue Health Inc. HLTH was down, falling 17% to $7.12. Cue Health recently partnered with Albertsons Companies for COVID-19 test kits.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 0.4% to $111.34, while gold traded up 0.4% to $1,929.30.

Silver traded up 1.2% Wednesday to $25.21 while copper rose 1% to $4.7485.

Euro zone

European shares were lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 fell 1.1%, London’s FTSE 100 slipped 0.2%, while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index fell 1.7%. The German DAX dropped 1.6%, French CAC 40 fell 1.5% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index fell 1.1%.

Annual inflation rate in the UK accelerated to 6.2% in February from 5.5% in January, while headline rate of output prices rose to 10.1% year-over-year in February.

Economics

Mortgage applications in the US declined 8.1% in the week ended March 18th.

US new home sales fell 2% to an annual rate of 772,000 in February.

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

Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Mary Daly will speak at 11:45 a.m. ET.

The Treasury will auction 20-year bonds at 1:00 p.m. ET.

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Check out our premarket coverage here .

COVID-19 Update

The U.S. has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world, reporting a total of 81,476,260 cases with around 999,790 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 43,012,740 cases and 516,630 deaths, while Brazil reported over 29,683,680 COVID-19 cases with 657,770 deaths. In total, there were at least 474,776,970 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,123,010 deaths.