Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Dow Drops Over 600 Points; Fulcrum Therapeutics Shares Tumble

U.S. stocks traded lower toward the end of trading, with the Dow Jones dropping more than 600 points on Friday.

The Dow traded down 1.98% to 31,634.44 while the NASDAQ fell 2.83% to 11,421.80. The S&P also fell, dropping, 2.14% to 3,931.98.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Consumer staples shares rose by 0.1% on Friday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included RLX Technology Inc. RLX, up 6% and Grocery Outlet Holding Corp. GO up 5%.

In trading on Friday, consumer discretionary shares dipped by 3.7%.

Top Headline

Annual inflation rate in the US accelerated to 8.6% in May, reaching the highest mark since December 1981. Analysts, however, were expecting a reading of 8.3%.

Equities Trading UP

Cogent Biosciences, Inc. COGT shares shot up 69% to $8.38 after the company reported initial data from its ongoing Phase 2 APEX clinical trial.

Shares of Regis Corporation RGS got a boost, shooting 20% to $0.6717 after the company announced a partnership with Zenoti. The company will sell its Opensalon Pro salon management system to Zenoti for up to $39 million in cash.

Paltalk, Inc. PALT shares were also up, gaining 16% to $2.2555 after the company acquired Visicom's ManyCam assets for $2.7 million.

Equities Trading DOWN

Fulcrum Therapeutics, Inc. FULC shares tumbled 40% to $4.87 after the company announced clinical proof-of-concept data from the ongoing Phase 1b trial of FTX-6058 for the treatment of sickle cell disease.

Shares of Caribou Biosciences, Inc. CRBU were down 26% to $6.42 after the company reported additional data from the CB-010 allogeneic CAR-T cell therapy Phase 1 ANTLER trial at the European Hematology Association 2022 Hybrid Congress.

Comtech Telecommunications Corp. CMTL was down, falling 22% to $9.55 after the company reported worse-than-expected Q3 sales results.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 0.7% to $120.66, while gold traded up 1.3% to $1,877.20.

Silver traded up 0.8% to $21.98 on Friday while copper fell 2% to $4.2955.

Euro zone

European shares closed lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 fell 2.69%, London’s FTSE 100 dropped 2.12% while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index fell 3.68%. The German DAX dropped 3.08%, French CAC 40 fell 2.69% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index dipped 5.17%.

Italy’s industrial production increased 1.6% from a month ago in April following a revised 0.2% increase a month ago. Annual inflation rate in Spain accelerated to 8.7% in May from 8.3% in April

Economics

Annual inflation rate in the US accelerated to 8.6% in May, reaching the highest mark since December 1981. Analysts, however, were expecting a reading of 8.3%.

The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index fell to 50.2 in June from 58.1 in the previous month.

The US government budget deficit narrowed to $66 billion in May from $132 billion in the year-ago period.

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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 87,114,740 cases with around 1,035,320 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 43,207,260 cases and 524,740 deaths, while Brazil reported over 31,360,850 COVID-19 cases with 667,840 deaths. In total, there were at least 539,281,010 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,328,520 deaths.