Mid-Afternoon Market Update: HireRight Rises Following Q4 Results; Applied Genetic Technologies Shares Fall

U.S. stocks traded higher toward the end of trading, with the Nasdaq Composite climbing more than 200 points on Tuesday.

The Dow traded up 0.60% to 34,760.82 while the NASDAQ rose 1.81% to 14,088.29. The S&P also rose, gaining, 0.98% to 4,504.93.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Communication services shares jumped by 2.2% on Tuesday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included iQIYI, Inc. IQ, up 28% and Bilibili Inc. BILI up 20%.

In trading on Tuesday, energy shares fell by 1.2%.

Top Headline

Carnival Corporation CCL reported weaker-than-expected sales results for its first quarter on Tuesday.

Carnival posted adjusted loss of $1.66 per share, missing market expectations for a loss of $0.89 per share. The company’s quarterly sales came in at $1.62 billion, missing estimates of $2.30 billion.

Equities Trading UP

Forge Global Holdings Inc. FRGE shares shot up 127% to $22.91. True Global Ventures’ portfolio company Forge Global Holdings completed its business combination with Motive Capital Corp on the 22nd of March, 2022.

Shares of HireRight Holdings Corporation HRT got a boost, shooting 20% to $15.09 after the company reported better-than-expected Q4 results. The company also issued FY22 EPS and sales guidance above analyst estimates.

FreightCar America, Inc. RAIL shares were also up, gaining 22% to $5.30 after the company reported better-than-expected Q4 results.

Equities Trading DOWN

ORIC Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ORIC shares tumbled 28% to $5.30 after the company decided to discontinue the further development of ORIC-101 after interim analyses from the two Phase 1b studies, wherein ORIC-101 did not demonstrate sufficient clinical activity. Oppenheimer and Guggenheim downgraded the stock.

Shares of Applied Genetic Technologies Corporation AGTC were down 29% to $1.2850 after the company reported pricing of public offering of common stock.

Statera Biopharma, Inc. STAB was down, falling 43% to $0.3379 after the company reported pricing of $5.7 million underwritten public offering.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 0.7% to $111.39, while gold traded down 0.5% to $1,920.90.

Silver traded down 1.7% Tuesday to $24.89 while copper fell 0.2% to $4.70.

Euro zone

European shares closed higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 gained 0.85%, London’s FTSE 100 gained 0.46%, while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index rose 1.17%. The German DAX climbed 1.02%, French CAC 40 rose 1.17% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index rose 0.98%.

Construction output in the Eurozone increased 4.1% year-over-year in January, following a revised 0.2% rise in December. The UK’s government reported a £13.1 billion deficit in its public finances for the month of February.

Economics

The Richmond Fed composite manufacturing index climbed to 13 in March from 1 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 81,448,400 cases with around 998,840 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 43,010,970 cases and 516,570 deaths, while Brazil reported over 29,641,840 COVID-19 cases with 657,360 deaths. In total, there were at least 472,770,900 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,106,520 deaths.