Mid-Morning Market Update: Markets Open Lower; Hormel Foods Earnings Top Views

U.S. stocks traded lower this morning, with the Dow Jones dropping 200 points on Thursday.

Following the market opening Thursday, the Dow traded down 0.61% to 32,612.95 while the NASDAQ fell 0.32% to 11,956.09. The S&P also fell, dropping, 0.56% to 4,078.11.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Materials shares jumped by 0.8% on Thursday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Endeavour Silver Corp. EXK, up 9% and Coeur Mining, Inc. CDE up 7%.

In trading on Thursday, health care shares fell 1.6%.

Top Headline

Hormel Foods Corporation HRL reported upbeat earnings for its second quarter on Thursday.

Hormel Foods posted quarterly earnings of $0.48 per share, beating analysts’ estimates of $0.47 per share. The company’s quarterly sales came in at $3.09 billion, versus expectations of $3.07 billion.

Hormel narrowed FY22 EPS guidance to $1.87 - $1.97 from $1.87 - $2.03. It continues to expect FY22 sales of $11.7 billion - $12.5 billion.

Equities Trading UP

Repare Therapeutics Inc. RPTX shares shot up 37% to $12.02 after the company announced it has entered into a worldwide license and collaboration agreement with Roche for the development and commercialization of camonsertib.

Shares of Bright Green Corporation BGXX got a boost, shooting 30% to $4.6183 after dropping 30% on Wednesday.

Pure Storage, Inc. PSTG shares were also up, gaining 21% to $28.99 after the company reported better-than-expected Q1 financials results. The company also issued Q2 and FY23 sales guidance above analyst estimates.

Equities Trading DOWN

Immunic, Inc. IMUX shares tumbled 39% to $3.5779 after reporting top-line data from Phase 2 CALDOSE-1 trial of Vidofludimus calcium in patients with moderate-to-severe ulcerative colitis. The company said trial did not achieve primary endpoint.

Shares of CASI Pharmaceuticals, Inc. CASI were down 18% to $3.3518 following effect of 1:10 reverse stock split.

Nutex Health, Inc. NUTX was down, falling 18% to $8.83.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 0.8% to $116.17, while gold traded up 1% to $1,867.70.

Silver traded up 1.4% to $22.21 on Thursday while copper rose 4.4% to $4.5190.

Euro zone

European shares were mostly higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 gained 0.5%, while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index fell 0.1%. The German DAX gained 0.7%, French CAC 40 jumped 1.2% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index gained 0.5%.

The annual producer inflation in the Eurozone rose to a new record high of 37.2% in April from a revised 36.9% in March.

Economics

US-based companies announced plans to reduce 20,712 jobs from their payrolls during the month of May.

Private businesses in the US hired 128,000 workers in May, the ADP said.

US initial jobless claims dropped by 11 thousand to 200 thousand during the week ended May 28th.

Nonfarm labor productivity dropped an annualized 7.3% in the first quarter, while unit labor costs surged an annualized 12.6%.

US factory orders rose 0.3% for April.

The Energy Information Administration’s weekly report on natural gas stocks in underground storage is scheduled for release at 10:30 a.m. ET.

The Energy Information Administration’s weekly report on petroleum inventories in the U.S. will be released at 11:00 a.m. ET.

The Treasury is set to auction 4-and 8-week bills at 11:30 a.m. ET.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Lorie Logan is set to speak at 12:00 p.m. ET.

Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Loretta Mester will speak at 1:00 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 86,146,950 cases with around 1,032,410 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 43,165,730 cases and 524,640 deaths, while Brazil reported over 31,060,010 COVID-19 cases with 666,840 deaths. In total, there were at least 533,679,650 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,316,160 deaths.