Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Crude Oil Rises Over 1%; Nektar Therapeutics Shares Slide

U.S. stocks traded higher in volatile session, with the Dow Jones gaining around 60 points toward the end of trading on Monday.

The Dow traded up 0.17% to 34,511 while the NASDAQ rose 0.26% to 13,385.50. The S&P also rose, gaining, 0.26% to 4,403.81.

Also check this: 4 Stocks Under $5 Insiders Are Aggressively Buying

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Energy shares jumped by 1.9% on Monday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Camber Energy, Inc. CEI, up 19% and PHX Minerals Inc. PHX up 9%.

In trading on Monday, health care shares fell 0.8%.

Top Headline

Bank of America Corp BAC reported better-than-expected results for its first quarter.

The bank reported quarterly earnings of $0.80 per share, beating analysts’ estimates of $0.74 per share. The company’s quarterly sales came in at $23.20 billion, versus expectations of $23.11 billion.

Equities Trading UP

Casa Systems, Inc. CASA shares shot up 48% to $5.77 after the company announced a multi-year contract with Verizon to provide 5G core network functions.

Shares of Natus Medical Incorporated NTUS got a boost, shooting 29% to $33.56 after the company announced it will be acquired by ArchiMed Group for $33.50 per share in cash.

Tritium DCFC Limited DCFC shares were also up, gaining 13% to $9.66 after the company announced a multi-year contract with BP for the supply of chargers and related services to support BP's global EV charging network.

Equities Trading DOWN

Nektar Therapeutics NKTR shares tumbled 27% to $4.4850. Nektar Therapeutics and Bristol Myers Squibb Co jointly decided to end the global clinical development program for bempegaldesleukin in combination with Opdivo. Goldman Sachs downgraded Nektar Therapeutics from Neutral to Sell and announced a $3 price target.

Shares of DiDi Global Inc. DIDI were down 17% to $2.0306 after the company announced a shareholders meeting to vote on voluntarily delisting the company's American Depositary Shares from the New York Stock Exchange. DiDi Global said its total revenue dropped to 40.8 billion yuan ($6.40 billion) for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2021, down from 46.7 billion yuan in the year-ago period.

TG Therapeutics, Inc. TGTX was down, falling 20% to $7.08 after the company announced it has voluntarily withdrawn the BLA/sNDA for U2 for the treatment of adult patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia and small lymphocytic lymphoma.

Also check out: Twitter And 4 Other Stocks Insiders Are Selling

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 1.4% to $108.43, while gold traded up 0.6% to $1,987.60.

Silver traded up 1.8% Monday to $26.15 while copper rose 1.6% to $4.7980.

Euro zone

Most of the European markets were closed today for the Easter Monday holiday.

Economics

The NAHB housing market index declined to 77 in April from 79 in March.

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard will speak at 4:00 p.m. ET.

COVID-19 Update

The U.S. has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world, reporting a total of 82,316,340 cases with around 1,015,450 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 43,044,280 cases and 521,960 deaths, while Brazil reported over 30,252,610 COVID-19 cases with 662,010 deaths. In total, there were at least 504,828,550 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,223,530 deaths.