Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Dow Tumbles 300 Points; Vallon Pharmaceuticals Shares Plunge

U.S. stocks traded lower toward the end of trading, with the Dow Jones falling more than 300 points on Monday.

The Dow traded down 0.95% to 34,424.62 while the NASDAQ fell 1.05% to 13,748.11. The S&P also fell, dropping, 0.52% to 4,439.73.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Energy shares jumped by 3.5% on Monday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included BP Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust BPT, up 12% and Camber Energy, Inc. CEI up 11%.

In trading on Monday, consumer discretionary shares fell by 1.4%.

Top Headline

The Chicago Fed National Activity Index declined to 0.51 in February from 0.59 in the previous month.

Equities Trading UP

Anaplan, Inc. PLAN shares shot up 28% to $64.56 as the company agreed to be acquired by Thoma Bravo in an all-cash deal valued at around $10.7 billion.

Shares of BitNile Holdings, Inc. NILE got a boost, shooting 52% to $0.8511 after the company said its EV charging subsidiary TurnOnGreen will be acquired by BitNile subsidiary Imperalis.

NeuroSense Therapeutics Ltd. NRSN shares were also up, gaining 316% to $6.49 as the company received clearance from the FDA to initiate a pharmacokinetic study of PrimeC in healthy adult subjects.

Equities Trading DOWN

Vallon Pharmaceuticals, Inc. VLON shares tumbled 69% to $2.3232 after releasing topline results from its Phase 1 SEAL study evaluating ADAIR, an abuse-deterrent formulation of immediate-release (IR) dextroamphetamine for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The study did not meet its primary endpoint, Emax Drug Liking. ADAIR scored similarly to what was observed in an earlier proof-of-concept study.

Shares of Imperial Petroleum Inc. IMPP were down 37% to $1.4893 after the company announced an upsized public offering of 37.5 million units at $1.60 per unit.

Allena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ALNA was down, falling 43% to $0.2771 after the company said it would terminate its URIROX-2 Study to reduce kidney stone disease progression.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 4.8% to $109.75, while gold traded down 0.1% to $1,928.80.

Silver traded up 0.8% Monday to $25.285 while copper fell 1% to $4.6920.

Euro zone

European shares closed mixed today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 gained 0.04%, London’s FTSE 100 gained 0.51%, while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index fell 0.34%. The German DAX dropped 0.60%, French CAC 40 fell 0.57% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index rose 0.30%.

Annual producer inflation in Germany surged a fresh record high for of 25.9% in February from 25% in January.

Economics

The Chicago Fed National Activity Index declined to 0.51 in February from 0.59 in the previous month.

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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 81,410,100 cases with around 997,930 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 43,009,390 cases and 516,510 deaths, while Brazil reported over 29,630,480 COVID-19 cases with 657,260 deaths. In total, there were at least 471,192,130 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,101,910 deaths.