Mid-Day Market Update: Crude Oil Rises Over 2%; Scholar Rock Shares Plunge

Midway through trading Tuesday, the Dow traded down 0.05% to 33,510.72 while the NASDAQ rose 0.48% to 13,771.47. The S&P also rose, gaining 0.20% to 4,086.01.

The U.S. has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world, reporting a total of 30,785,730 cases with around 555,610 deaths. Brazil reported over 13,013,600 COVID-19 cases with 332,750 deaths, while India confirmed a total of at least 12,686,040 cases and 165,540 deaths. In total, there were at least 131,897,850 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 2,862,640 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Consumer discretionary shares rose 0.6% on Tuesday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Target Hospitality Corp. TH, up 23%, and GSX Techedu Inc. GSX, up 17%.

In trading on Tuesday, financial shares fell 0.3%.

Top Headline

Paychex, Inc. PAYX reported better-than-expected earnings for its third quarter.

Paychex reported quarterly earnings of $0.96 per share, beating analysts’ estimates of $0.92 per share. The company’s quarterly sales came in at 1.10 billion, versus expectations of $1.11 billion.

 

Equities Trading UP

Brooklyn ImmunoTherapeutics, Inc. BTX shares shot up 40% to $6.54 after multiple Form 3 filings late Monday night showed new stakes by insiders. The company named Howard Federoff as CEO.

Shares of Scienjoy Holding Corporation SJ got a boost, shooting 56% to $14.92 after the company reported strategic alliance with Snipp Interactive to launch new loyalty and rewards system and to explore bitcoin and NFT rewards for its 250 million users and 300,000 broadcasters.

BBQ Holdings, Inc. BBQ shares were also up, gaining 18% to $10.71 after Craig-Hallum upgraded the stock from Hold to Buy and raised its price target from $5 to $15 per share.

Check out these big movers of the day

Equities Trading DOWN

Ebang International Holdings Inc. EBON shares tumbled 16% to $5.31 after Hindenburg Research released a bearish report on the company's stock.

Shares of Ultra Clean Holdings, Inc. UCTT were down 11% to $57.77 after the company reported commencement of $175 million common stock offering.

Scholar Rock Holding Corporation SRRK was down, falling 15% to $38.60 after the company announced top-line data from the TOPAZ Phase 2 trial evaluating apitegromab (SRK-015) in patients with Type 2 and Type 3 spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 2.4% to $60.04, while gold traded up 0.9% to $1,745.00.

Silver traded up 2% Tuesday to $25.285 while copper fell 0.7% to $4.1080.

Euro zone

European shares were higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 rose 0.74%, the Spanish Ibex Index rose 0.75% and the German DAX 30 gained 0.8%. Meanwhile, the French CAC 40 rose 0.52%, London’s FTSE 100 rose 1.3% and Italy’s FTSE MIB gained 0.35%.

The Eurozone unemployment rate stood at 8.3% for February, while Italy's unemployment rate fell to 10.2% in February.

New car registrations in the UK increased 11.5% year-over-year to 283,964 units in March. Spain's consumer confidence indicator increased by 7.1 points from the earlier month to 73 in March, while the number of people registered as unemployed dropped 59,149 from a month ago to 3.95 million during March.

Economics

The number of job openings increased by 268,000 from the previous month to 7.367 million in February.

Check out the full economic calendar here