Mid-Day Market Update: Crude Oil Rises Over 2%; Curis Shares Slide

U.S. stocks traded higher midway through trading, with the Nasdaq Composite surging more than 200 points on Monday.

The Dow traded up 0.14% to 34,868.54 while the NASDAQ rose 1.56% to 14,484.38. The S&P also rose, gaining, 0.56% to 4,571.26.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Communication services shares jumped by 2.2% on Monday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Twitter, Inc./b> TWTR, up 27% and Bilibili Inc. BILI up 18%.

In trading on Monday, utilities shares fell 1.1%.

Top Headline

Factory orders in the US dropped by 0.5% month-over-month to $542 billion in February, recording the first drop since April last year.

 

Equities Trading UP

Aterian, Inc. ATER shares shot up 57% to $3.6650. Aterian said Cynthia Williams has joined the Company's Board of Directors.

Shares of Jumia Technologies AG JMIA got a boost, shooting 27% to $12.06 after the company announced it would make its last mile logistics capabilities available to UPS.

Twitter, Inc. TWTR shares were also up, gaining 27% to $49.79 after Tesla CEO Elon Musk disclosed a 9.2% passive stake in the social media company.

Equities Trading DOWN

Curis, Inc. CRIS shares tumbled 35% to $1.57. The FDA has placed a partial clinical hold on Curis Inc's TakeAim Leukemia Phase 1/2a study in relapsed or refractory (R/R) acute myeloid leukemia (AML) or high-risk myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS).

Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp. DWAC were down 11% to $56.08 amid Tesla CEO Elon Musk purchasing a 9.2% stake in competitor Twitter.

Iveda Solutions, Inc. IVDA was down, falling 15% to $3.20. Iveda reported pricing of $8.0 million public offering, uplisting to Nasdaq and reverse stock split.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 2.4% to $101.60, while gold traded up 0.7% to $1,936.90.

Silver traded down 0.2% Monday to $24.595 while copper rose 1.9% to $4.7795.

Euro zone

European shares were higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 gained 0.84%, London’s FTSE 100 rose 0.28%, while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index rose 0.2%. The German DAX gained 0.5%, French CAC 40 gained 0.7% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index climbed 0.05%.

The number of foreign tourist arrivals in Spain climbed 1007.8% year-over-year to 3.157 million in February, while number of people registered as unemployed in the country dropped by 2,921 from a month ago to 3.109 million in March. The German trade surplus shrank to €11.4 billion in February from €17.9 billion a year ago.

 

Economics

 

Factory orders in the US dropped by 0.5% month-over-month to $542 billion in February, recording the first drop since April last year.

COVID-19 Update

The U.S. has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world, reporting a total of 81,832,610 cases with around 1,008,190 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 43,029,040 cases and 521,380 deaths, while Brazil reported over 29,999,810 COVID-19 cases with 660,260 deaths. In total, there were at least 491,871,560 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,176,620 deaths.