US Stocks Mixed; Housing Starts Edge Lower In March

U.S. stocks traded mixed this morning, with the Nasdaq Composite dropping over 50 points on Tuesday.

Following the market opening Tuesday, the Dow traded down 0.12% to 33,945.01 while the NASDAQ rose 0.55% to 12,224.15. The S&P 500, also rose, gaining, 0.37% to 4,166.85.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

• Information technology shares rose by 0.9% on Tuesday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included TeraWulf Inc. WULF, up 8%, and inTEST Corporation INTT, up 13%.
• In trading on Tuesday, health care fell by 0.3%.

Top Headline

Housing starts in the US fell 0.8% month-over-month to an annualized rate of 1.42 million in March, while building permits dipped 8.8% to an annual rate of 1.413 million.

Equities Trading UP

• BELLUS Health Inc. BLU shares shot up 99% to $14.43 after GSK announced it will acquire the company for $14.75 per share in cash, representing an approximate total equity value of $2 billion.
• Shares of HTG Molecular Diagnostics, Inc. HTGM got a boost, shooting 25% to $3.74 after the company reported key first quarter milestone achievements for drug discovery.
• Petros Pharmaceuticals, Inc. PTPI shares were also up, gaining 26% to $4.8695.

Equities Trading DOWN

• China Jo-Jo Drugstores, Inc. CJJD shares dropped 62% to $1.81 after the company announced a $7 million registered direct offering.
• Shares of United Insurance Holdings Corp. UIHC were down 43% to $1.97. United Insurance, last month, posted a Q4 loss of $6.33 per share.
• Blackboxstocks Inc. BLBX was down, falling 26% to $4.05. Blackboxstocks shares jumped 106% on Monday after the company announced it entered a letter of intent to merge with Evtec.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 0.4% to $80.50 while gold traded up 0.1% at $ 2,007.90.

Silver traded down 0.1% to $25.07 on Tuesday while copper fell 0.1% to $4.0635.

Euro zone

European shares were higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 gained 0.5%, London’s FTSE 100 rose 0.3% while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index rose 0.6%. The German DAX rose 0.7%, French CAC 40 rose 0.7% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index gained 0.9%.

The ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment for the Eurozone declined by 3.6 points to 6.4 in April, while ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment for Germany fell for a second month to a reading of 4.1 in April. Italy recorded a trade surplus of EUR 2.1 billion in February, versus a year-ago gap of EUR 1.5 billion.

The unemployment rate in the UK rose by 0.1 percentage points on the quarter to 3.8% in December to February, while average weekly earnings, including bonuses, climbed 5.9% year-over-year to GBP 638 during the three months to February.

Asia Pacific Markets

Asian markets closed mixed on Tuesday, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 gaining 0.51%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index falling 0.63% and China’s Shanghai Composite Index gaining 0.23%. India’s S&P BSE Sensex dropped 0.3%.

Chinese retail sales rose by 10.6% from the previous year in March, while the country’s economy expanded by 2.2% during the three months to March. China's industrial production rose by 3.9% year-over-year in March.

Economics

Housing starts in the US fell 0.8% month-over-month to an annualized rate of 1.42 million in March, while building permits dipped 8.8% to an annual rate of 1.413 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 106,475,030 cases with around 1,158,250 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 44,834,850 cases and 531,150 deaths, while France reported over 39,903,410 COVID-19 cases with 166,020 deaths. In total, there were at least 685,740,980 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,842,940 deaths.