Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Dow Tumbles 150 Points; Yumanity Therapeutics Shares Plunge

Toward the end of trading Wednesday, the Dow traded down 0.45% to 35,210.04 while the NASDAQ fell 0.28% to 14,466.47. The S&P also fell, dropping, 0.29% to 4,563.94.

The U.S. has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world, reporting a total of 68,767,000 cases with around 877,240 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 37,901,240 cases and 487,220 deaths, while Brazil reported over 23,215,550 COVID-19 cases with 621,570 deaths. In total, there were at least 335,521,830 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 5,574,720 deaths.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Consumer staples shares gained 1.2% on Wednesday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Splash Beverage Group, Inc. SBEV, up 28% and Unilever PLC UL up 9%.

In trading on Wednesday, financials shares fell by 0.6%.

Top Headline

Bank of America Corporation BAC reported better-than-expected earnings for its fourth quarter.

Bank of America posted quarterly earnings of $0.82 per share, beating analysts’ estimates of $0.76 per share. The company’s quarterly revenue came in at $22.06 billion, versus expectations of $22.18 billion.

Equities Trading UP

Zogenix, Inc. ZGNX shares shot up 67% to $26.15 after the company announced it will be acquired by UCB for approximately $1.9 billion.

Shares of Splash Beverage Group, Inc. SBEV got a boost, shooting 27% to $4.1199 after the company announced it has received authorization to sell its Pulpoloco Sangria line in 187 of Ralph's Grocery stores.

NSTS Bancorp, Inc. NSTS shares were also up, gaining 26% to $12.63 after the company priced its IPO at $10 per share.

Check out these big movers of the day

Equities Trading DOWN

Cardiff Oncology, Inc. CRDF shares tumbled 22% to $4.8150 after the company posted new data from Phase 1b/2 trial of onvansertib combined with standard-of-care (SOC) FOLFIRI/bevacizumab for second-line KRAS-mutated metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC).

Shares of Yumanity Therapeutics, Inc. YMTX were down 18% to $2.00. The FDA has placed a partial clinical hold on Yumanity Therapeutics multidose clinical trials of YTX-7739, currently being developed for Parkinson's disease.

OncoCyte Corporation OCX was down, falling 16% to $1.8379. OncoCyte announced a development and co-marketing agreement for two distributed in vitro diagnostic assays on Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Ion Torrent Genexus System.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 1.8% to $86.97, while gold traded up 1.7% to $1,843.20.

Silver traded up 3.1% Wednesday to $24.23 while copper rose 1.9% to $4.4665.

Euro zone

European shares closed mostly higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 gained 0.23%, London’s FTSE 100 gained 0.35%, while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index fell 0.08%. The German DAX climbed 0.24%, French CAC 40 rose 0.55% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index fell 0.41%.

The Eurozone current account surplus shrank to EUR 26.0 billion in November from EUR 27.5 billion in the year-ago month. Germany’s annual inflation rate was confirmed at 5.3% in December, notching the highest level since June 1992.

Annual inflation rate in the UK climbed to 5.4% in December from 5.1% in the previous month, while headline rate of output prices fell to 9.3% year-over-year in December.

Economics

Housing starts rose 1.4% to an annualized rate of 1.702 million in December, while building permits jumped 9.1% to an annual rate of 1.873 million.

The Johnson Redbook Retail Sales Index jumped 15.2% year-over-year for the week ended January 15.

Check out the full economic calendar here