Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Skillsoft Falls After Q1 Results; Applied UV Shares Spike Higher

U.S. stocks traded lower toward the end of trading, with the Nasdaq Composite falling more than 1% on Thursday.

The Dow traded down 0.61% to 32,711.32 while the NASDAQ fell 1.19% to 11,941.89. The S&P also fell, dropping, 0.89% to 4,079.21.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Consumer discretionary shares rose by 0.4% on Thursday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included JOANN Inc. JOAN, up 10% and Garrett Motion Inc. GTX up 9%.

In trading on Thursday, materials shares fell 1%.

Top Headline

US initial jobless claims rose by 27,000 to 229,000 in the week ended June 4th, the highest level since mid-January. Analysts, however, were expecting a reading of 210,000 for the latest week.

Equities Trading UP

Applied UV, Inc. AUVI shares shot up 57% to $2.78 after the company announced its distributor, M/S Novatek Pakistan, was awarded as the sole source provider of Airocide air purification systems for government hospitals.

Shares of Bluejay Diagnostics, Inc. BJDX got a boost, shooting 23% to $1.59 after the company announced that the FDA has agreed to consider its plan to pursue a De Novo submission for the Symphony IL-6 Test.

Sonnet BioTherapeutics Holdings, Inc. SONN shares were also up, gaining 19% to $0.2855 after the company announced results from a preclinical combination study of SON-1010 with anti-PD1 checkpoint inhibition.

Equities Trading DOWN

PagSeguro Digital Ltd. PAGS shares tumbled 19% to $13.90 after reporting Q1 results. Wells Fargo maintained PagSeguro Digital with an Equal-Weight and lowered the price target from $23 to $21.

Shares of Forge Global Holdings, Inc. FRGE were down 30% to $10.03. Forge announced redemption of public warrants.

Skillsoft Corp. SKIL was down, falling 17% to $5.25 after the company reported worse-than-expected Q1 sales results

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 0.3% to $121.74, while gold traded down 0.2% to $1,852.50.

Silver traded down 1.3% to $21.815 on Thursday while copper fell 1.5% to $4.3885.

Euro zone

European shares closed lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 fell 1.36%, London’s FTSE 100 slipped 1.54% while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index fell 1.49%. The German DAX dropped 1.71%, French CAC 40 fell 1.4% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index declined 1.90%.

Payroll employment in the France’s private sector increased by 0.3% to 20.60 million in the first quarter.

Economics

US initial jobless claims rose by 27,000 to 229,000 in the week ended June 4th, the highest level since mid-January. Analysts, however, were expecting a reading of 210,000 for the latest week.

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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 86,988,670 cases with around 1,035,030 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 43,197,520 cases and 524,720 deaths, while Brazil reported over 31,315,770 COVID-19 cases with 667,700 deaths. In total, there were at least 538,224,900 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,326,880 deaths.