Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Dow Drops 1%; Snap One Shares Plunge

U.S. stocks traded lower toward the end of trading, with the Dow Jones falling more than 350 points on Wednesday.

The Dow traded down 1.05% to 34,442.47 while the NASDAQ fell 1.09% to 13,953.32. The S&P also fell, dropping, 0.99% to 4,466.85.

Also check this: Alphabet And 3 Other Stocks Sold By Insiders

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Energy shares jumped by 1.8% on Wednesday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Comstock Resources, Inc. CRK, up 10% and BP Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust BPT up 8%.

In trading on Wednesday, financials shares fell by 1.7%.

Top Headline

General Mills, Inc. GIS reported better-than-expected earnings for its third quarter and raised its FY22 outlook.

General Mills posted adjusted earnings of $0.84 per share, beating market expectations of $0.78 per share. The company’s quarterly sales came in at $4.54 billion, missing estimates of $4.56 billion.

General Mills boosted its FY22 organic net sales growth guidance from 4%-5% to 5%. It also expects adjusted per-share profit between flat and a growth of 2%, versus its prior range of a 2% drop to a 1% growth.

Equities Trading UP

4D pharma plc LBPS shares shot up 29% to $6.04 after the company announced the primary efficacy endpoint was met early in the renal cell carcinoma group in Part B of the study of MRx0518 and KEYTRUDA.

Shares of Zentek Ltd. ZTEK got a boost, shooting 23% to $3.33. On Tuesday, the stock began trading on the Nasdaq following an uplisting from OTC Pink Sheets.

Allego N.V. ALLG shares were also up, gaining 128% to $18.87 after the company announced the completion of its merger agreement with Spartan Acquisition Corp., which resulted in 98% of the company notes redeemed at the merger vote. The company is also gaining retail investor interest.

Equities Trading DOWN

Vicor Corporation VICR shares tumbled 18% to $63.47. CJS Securities downgraded Vicor from Market Outperform to Market Perform.

Shares of Codex DNA, Inc. DNAY were down 27% to $6.70 after the company reported worse-than-expected Q4 EPS results.

Snap One Holdings Corp. SNPO was down, falling 19% to $16.59 after the company reported Q4 earnings results. JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley lowered their price targets in the stock.

Also check out: Executives Buy More Than $12M Of 3 Stocks

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 1.8% to $113.75, while gold traded up 0.7% to $1,935.80.

Silver traded up 1.1% Wednesday to $25.185 while copper rose 1.7% to $4.7810.

Euro zone

European shares closed lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 fell 1.01%, London’s FTSE 100 slipped 0.22%, while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index fell 1.87%. The German DAX dropped 1.31%, French CAC 40 fell 1.17% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index fell 0.96%.

Annual inflation rate in the UK accelerated to 6.2% in February from 5.5% in January, while headline rate of output prices rose to 10.1% year-over-year in February.

Economics

Mortgage applications in the US declined 8.1% in the week ended March 18th.

US new home sales fell 2% to an annual rate of 772,000 in February.

US crude oil inventories declined by 2.508 million barrels to 413.4 million barrels in the week ended March 18th, the Energy Information Administration said.

Check out this: Alphabet And 3 Other Stocks Sold By Insiders

Check out our premarket coverage here .

COVID-19 Update

The U.S. has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world, reporting a total of 81,476,260 cases with around 999,790 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 43,012,740 cases and 516,630 deaths, while Brazil reported over 29,683,680 COVID-19 cases with 657,770 deaths. In total, there were at least 474,776,970 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,123,010 deaths.