Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Dow Tumbles Over 2000 Points; Inovio Pharmaceuticals Shares Gain

Toward the end of trading Thursday, the Dow traded down 8.55% to 21,538.27 while the NASDAQ fell 7.61% to 7,346.71. The S&P also fell, dropping 7.87% to 2,525.71. South Korea confirmed a total of 7,869 coronavirus cases, while Italy reported a total of at least 12,000 confirmed cases and 827 deaths. Mainland China reported 15 additional confirmed cases with 11 new deaths. In total, there are at least 127,000 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with over 4,700 deaths.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Real estate shares slipped by just 3.7% on Thursday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Farmland Partners Inc. FPI, up 5%, and Maui Land & Pineapple Company, Inc. MLP, up 6%.

In trading on Thursday, energy shares tumbled 7.8%.

Top Headline

The U.S. Federal Reserve announced plans to pump more than $1 trillion in additional liquidity into the financial system.

Equities Trading UP

Predictive Oncology Inc. POAI shares shot up 25% to $2.62 after the company highlighted launch of new AI platform for vaccine and drug development targeting coronavirus, MERS and SARS.

Shares of Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. INO got a boost, shooting 13% to $9.47 amid the continued global spread of the coronavirus, as the company is working on developing a vaccine candidate. The recent catalyst is an update from the company regarding a new $5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to accelerate the testing and scale up of Cellectra 3PSP proprietary smart device for intradermal delivery of INO-4800.

Tiziana Life Sciences PLC TLSA shares were also up, gaining 20% to $4.73 after surging over 93% on Wednesday. Tiziana priced its 3.33 million ADSs follow-on offering at $3 per ADS.

Equities Trading DOWN

Compugen Ltd. CGEN shares tumbled 33% to $7.92. Compugen priced its 8.3 million share public offering of ordinary shares at $9 per share.

Shares of ZAGG Inc ZAGG were down 44% to $3.00 after the company reported worse-than-expected Q4 results and suspended review of strategic alternatives.

Rubius Therapeutics, Inc. RUBY was down, falling 40% to $3.94 after the company reported a loss for the fourth quarter.

Commodities


In commodity news, oil traded down 3.3% to $31.88, while gold traded down 2.5% to $1,600.70.

Silver traded down 3.9% Thursday to $16.13, while copper fell 1% to $2.4775.

Euro zone

European shares were lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 slipped 11.48% the Spanish Ibex Index fell 14.06%, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index fell 16.92% Meanwhile, the German DAX dropped 12.24%, and the French CAC 40 fell 12.28% while UK shares fell 10.87%.

Economics

Initial jobless claims fell 4,000 to 211,000 for the latest week. However, analysts were expecting a reading of 218,000.

The Producer Price Index fell 0.6% for February, versus economists’ expectations for a 0.1% decline.

Domestic supplies of natural gas dropped 48 billion cubic feet for the week ended March 6, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported. However, analysts expected a fall of 55 billion cubic feet.

Data on money supply for the recent week will be released at 4:30 p.m. ET.