US Stocks Edge Lower; Factory Orders Decline In February

U.S. stocks traded slightly lower this morning, with the Dow Jones dropping around 40 points on Tuesday.

The Dow traded down 0.10% to 33,566.87 while the NASDAQ fell 0.06% to 12,181.88. The S&P 500, also fell, dropping, 0.02% to 4,123.58.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

• Energy shares jumped by 4.7% on Tuesday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Nine Energy Service, Inc. NINE, up 15%, and BP Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust BPT, up 19%.
• In trading on Tuesday, consumer discretionary fell by 1.4%.

Top Headline

U.S. factory orders dropped 0.7% for February, versus market expectations for a 0.5% decline.

Equities Trading UP

• Bullfrog AI Holdings, Inc. BFRG shares shot up 87% to $8.79 after the company announced a worldwide license agreement with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for use of patented technology powering the company's bfLEAP platform.
• Shares of Cardlytics, Inc. CDLX got a boost, shooting 29% to $4.4450 after the company raised its Q1 revenue guidance.
• Near Intelligence, Inc. NIR shares were also up, gaining 17% to $3.46. Near Intelligence recently said Q4 total revenue rose 5% year-over-year to $15.3 million.

Equities Trading DOWN

• Nogin, Inc. NOGN shares dropped 63% to $2.4253. Nogin priced the public offering of 7.33 million shares of common stock and 7.33 million common warrants to purchase 7.33 million shares of common stock at a combined price of $3.00 per share and common warrant.
• Shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. AMC were down 21% to $4.05 after the company reached a settlement with shareholders, which would allow for the conversion of preferred APE shares into common shares.
• Kalera Public Limited Company KAL was down, falling 64% to $1.47. Kalera plc said its wholly-owned and main operating subsidiary, Kalera, Inc., filed for Chapter 11 protection to pursue financial and operational reorganization.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 1.1% to $81.25 while gold traded up 0.5% at $2,009.90.

Silver traded up 0.9% to $24.245 on Tuesday while copper fell 1.7% to $3.9755.

Euro zone

European shares were mostly higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 rose 0.5%, London’s FTSE 100 fell 0.1% while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index rose 0.8%. The German DAX gained 0.6%, French CAC 40 rose 0.4% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index gained 0.2%.

The producer price inflation in the Eurozone eased to 13.2% year-over-year in February versus a revised 15.1% increase in the earlier month. German trade surplus came in at EUR 16 billion in February, compared to market expectations of EUR 17 billion. The number of people registering as jobless in Spain dropped by 1.67% to 2.86 million in March.

Asia Pacific Markets

Asian markets closed mixed on Tuesday, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 gaining 0.35%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dropping 0.66% and China’s Shanghai Composite Index gaining 0.49%.

The Reserve Bank of Australia maintained the cash rate at 3.6% at its April meeting.

Economics

• U.S. factory orders dropped 0.7% for February, versus market expectations for a 0.5% decline.
• U.S. job openings fell to 9.9 million in February from 10.6 million.

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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 106,253,340 cases with around 1,155,350 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 44,722,600 cases and 530,880 deaths, while France reported over 39,807,730 COVID-19 cases with 165,730 deaths. In total, there were at least 684,140,490 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,832,670 deaths.