Mid-Day Market Update: Nasdaq Rises 1%; Praxis Precision Medicines Shares Plunge

U.S. stocks traded higher midway through trading, with the Nasdaq Composite gaining more than 1% on Monday.

The Dow traded up 0.73% to 33,139.03 while the NASDAQ rose 1.16% to 12,151.86. The S&P also rose, gaining, 1.05% to 4,151.62.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Consumer discretionary shares jumped by 2.2% on Monday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Gaotu Techedu Inc. GOTU, up 19% and Newegg Commerce, Inc. NEGG up 18%.

In trading on Monday, energy shares fell 0.2%.

Top Headline

Science Applications International Corporation SAIC reported upbeat results for its first quarter.

Science Applications posted quarterly earnings of $1.88 per share, beating analysts’ estimates of $1.77 per share. The company’s quarterly sales came in at $2.00 billion, versus expectations of $1.93 billion.

Science Applications raised its FY23 EPS guidance from $6.80-$7.10 to $6.90-$7.20 and narrowed its FY23 sales guidance from $7.35 billion-$7.55 billion to $7.43 billion-$7.55 billion.

Equities Trading UP

DiDi Global Inc. DIDI shares shot up 47% to $2.7150 after the Chinese government said the company can resume adding new users.

Shares of Futu Holdings Limited FUTU got a boost, shooting 22% to $44.97 after the company reported Q1 earnings results.

Yumanity Therapeutics, Inc. YMTX shares were also up, gaining 34% to $1.9012 after the company announced definitive agreements for two strategic transactions. Yumanity Therapeutics agreed to sell its lead clinical-stage product candidate, YTX-7739, and discovery-stage neuroscience candidates to Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, a unit of Johnson & Johnson for $26 million. Under the second agreement, Kineta will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yumanity in an all-stock transaction, resulting in a combined publicly-traded company renamed Kineta Inc.

Equities Trading DOWN

Praxis Precision Medicines, Inc. PRAX shares tumbled 65% to $2.9825 after the company announced the PRAX-114 Phase 2/3 monotherapy Aria study did not achieve statistical significance on the primary endpoint.

Shares of Gevo, Inc. GEVO were down 31% to $3.15 after the company announced a $150 million registered direct offering priced at-the-market under Nasdaq rules.

Pear Therapeutics, Inc. PEAR was down, falling 19% to $3.50. Pear Therapeutics announced new analysis showing reduction in healthcare resource utilization and associated costs in patients using reSET at 6 months.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 0.1% to $118.81, while gold traded down 0.1% to $1,849.80.

Silver traded up 1.4% to $22.215 on Monday while copper fell 0.8% to $4.4345.

Euro zone

European shares were higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 gained 1.22%, London’s FTSE 100 gained 1.38% while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index rose 1.39%. The German DAX gained 1.61%, French CAC 40 rose 1.5% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index jumped 1.97%.

 

Economics

There were no major US economic releases Monday

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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 86,522,560 cases with around 1,033,590 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 43,181,330 cases and 524,700 deaths, while Brazil reported over 31,153,760 COVID-19 cases with 667,050 deaths. In total, there were at least 535,513,050 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,320,680 deaths.