Mid-Day Market Update: Dow Jumps 150 Points; Crude Oil Surges 8%

U.S. stocks traded higher midway through trading, with the Dow Jones gaining around 150 points on Thursday.

The Dow traded up 0.46% to 34,220.00 while the NASDAQ rose 0.28% to 13,474.33. The S&P also rose, gaining, 0.48% to 4,378.68.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Energy shares climbed by 2.1% on Thursday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Energy Fuels Inc. UUUU, up 11% and Indonesia Energy Corporation Limited INDO up 14%.

In trading on Thursday, information technology shares fell by 0.8%.

Top Headline

US initial jobless claims dropped by 15 thousand to 214 thousand in the week ended March 12th, recording the lowest level in 10 weeks. Analysts were expecting a reading of 220 thousand.

Equities Trading UP

Allego N.V. ALLG shares shot up 74% to $11.23. Spartan Acquisition Corp. III reported the completion of its business combination with Allego Holding B.V.

Shares of Marrone Bio Innovations, Inc. MBII got a boost, shooting 45% to $1.0150. Bioceres Crop Solutions Corp and Marrone Bio Innovations reported a merger deal.

TD Holdings, Inc. GLG shares were also up, gaining 66% to $0.3939 after the company reported FY21 results.

Equities Trading DOWN

SecureWorks Corp. SCWX shares tumbled 12% to $11.24 following Q4 results.

Shares of Akanda Corp. AKAN were down 17% to $9.18. The company recently priced its IPO at $4 per share.

Integrated Media Technology Limited IMTE was down, falling 34% to $7.14. Integrated Media Technology issued a filing indicating the board approved the fund raising of up to $20 million.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 8.2% to $102.86, while gold traded up 2% to $1,948.10.

Silver traded up 4% Thursday to $25.69 while copper rose 1.6% to $4.6740.

Euro zone

European shares were mostly lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 rose 0.01%, London’s FTSE 100 gained 0.76%, while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index fell 0.13%. The German DAX declined 0.7%, French CAC 40 slipped 0.02% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index fell 1.22%.

Annual inflation rate in the Eurozone increased to a fresh record high of 5.9% in February from 5.1% in the previous month. Spanish trade deficit widened to €6.1 billion in January from €1.8 billion in the year-ago month. Passenger car sales in the European Union fell 6.7% year-over-year to 719,465 in February.

Economics

Housing starts in the US rose 6.8% to an annualized rate of 1.769 million in February, while building permits slipped 1.9% last month.

US initial jobless claims dropped by 15 thousand to 214 thousand in the week ended March 12th, recording the lowest level in 10 weeks. Analysts were expecting a reading of 220 thousand.

The Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index climbed to 27.4 in March from 16 in February.

Industrial production in the US rose 0.5% from a month ago in February.

US natural-gas supplies dropped 79 billion cubic feet last week, the Energy Information Administration said.

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Check out the full economic calendar here

COVID-19 Update

The U.S. has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world, reporting a total of 81,289,600 cases with around 994,730 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 43,001,470 cases and 516,160 deaths, while Brazil reported over 29,478,030 COVID-19 cases with 656,000 deaths. In total, there were at least 464,650,630 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,082,830 deaths.