Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Nasdaq Falls 150 Points; Orphazyme Shares Plunge

U.S. stocks traded mostly lower toward the end of trading, with the Nasdaq dropping 150 points on Friday.

The Dow traded up 0.07% to 33,198.82 while the NASDAQ fell 1.18% to 12,975.53. The S&P also fell, dropping, 0.39% to 4,242.84.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Financials shares climbed by 0.3% on Friday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Vinci Partners Investments Ltd. VINP, up 5% and OppFi Inc. OPFI up 10%.

In trading on Friday, communication services shares fell by 0.8%.

Top Headline

The Buckle, Inc. BKE reported better-than-expected results for its fourth quarter on Friday.

Buckle reported Q4 earnings of $1.69 per share, beating analysts’ estimates of $1.44 per share. The company’s quarterly sales came in at $380.93 million, versus expectations of $366.30 million.

Equities Trading UP

Clearside Biomedical, Inc. CLSD shares shot up 32% to $1.7850 after the company reported better-than-expected Q4 results.

Shares of Lazydays Holdings, Inc. LAZY got a boost, shooting 23% to $21.94 after the company reported Q4 earnings results.

Altamira Therapeutics Ltd. CYTO shares were also up, gaining 32% to $0.9097. Altamira Therapeutics reported in vitro efficacy data for bentrio nasal spray in protecting against Sars-CoV-2 omicron variant.

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Equities Trading DOWN

RLX Technology Inc. RLX shares tumbled 36% to $1.5075. RLX Technology reported fourth-quarter FY21 sales growth of 17.7% year-on-year, to $298.8 million (RMB1.9 billion), missing the consensus of $367.8 million.

Shares of DiDi Global Inc. DIDI were down 40% to $2.0250 following a Bloomberg report titled 'Didi Global Said To Halt Hong Kong Listing Plan On Cybersecurity Probe.'

Orphazyme A/S ORPH was down, falling 46% to $0.6756 after the company announced it will institute a reduction of roughly 50% of its current work force and filed a petition for an in-court restructuring.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 2.6% to $108.78, while gold traded down 0.5% to $1,990.80.

Silver traded up 0.2% Friday to $26.30 while copper fell 0.5% to $4.6305.

Euro zone

European shares closed higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 rose 0.95%, London’s FTSE 100 rose 0.80%, while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index rose 0.90%. The German DAX gained 1.38%, French CAC 40 gained 0.85% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index gained 0.68%.

Spanish inflation rate was revised higher to 7.6% in February versus a preliminary estimate of 7.4%. Annual inflation rate in Germany was confirmed at 5.1% in February.

Construction output in the UK expanded 9.9% year-over-year in January, following a 7.4% rise in the prior month, while trade deficit widened to GBP 16.159 billion in January from GBP 2.337 in the prior month. The British economy grew by 0.8% month-over-month in January, while industrial production increased 0.7% in January.

Economics

The University of Michigan consumer sentiment index dropped to 59.7 in March from 62.8 in the previous month.

The total number of active U.S. oil rigs gained by 8 to 527 rigs this week, Baker Hughes Inc reported.

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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 81,108,780 cases with around 991,260 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 42,984,260 cases and 515,740 deaths, while Brazil reported over 29,249,900 COVID-19 cases with 654,140 deaths. In total, there were at least 453,958,600 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,052,800 deaths.