Dow Tumbles 250 Points Following Powell's Comments; Crude Oil Down 2%

U.S. stocks traded lower midway through trading, with the Dow Jones dropping around 250 points on Tuesday.

The Dow traded down 0.77% to 33,172.39 while the NASDAQ fell 0.72% to 11,591.36. The S&P 500 also fell, dropping, 0.91% to 4,011.71.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

• Industrials shares fell by just 0.4% on Tuesday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Nauticus Robotics, Inc. KITT, up 7%, and Azul S.A. AZUL, up 9%.
• In trading on Tuesday, materials shares dipped by 1.5%.

Top Headline

Fed Chair Jerome Powell reiterated the committee's goal of getting inflation back down to 2%. Powell also acknowledged the committee is aware that continued high inflation is causing significant hardships.

Equities Trading UP

• WW International, Inc. WW shares shot up 42% to $5.49 despite worse-than-expected Q4 revenue and Q1 guidance below estimates. The company also announced it will acquire Weekend Health, Inc. for a net purchase price of $106 million.
• Shares of Virax Biolabs Group Limited VRAX got a boost, shooting 117% to $1.43 after the company announced an agreement for the distribution of an Avian Influenza A Virus real-time PCR test kit to the European market.
• Unicycive Therapeutics, Inc. UNCY shares were also up, gaining 72% to $2.13 after the company announced a private placement of up to $130 million in gross proceeds to commercialize and launch Renazorb.

Equities Trading DOWN

• Cara Therapeutics, Inc. CARA shares tumbled 30% to $7.03 after the company reported worse-than-expected Q4 results.
• Shares of Intrusion Inc. INTZ were down 28% to $1.6101 after the company reported worse-than-expected Q4 results.
• Calavo Growers, Inc. CVGW was down, falling 27% to $22.74 following weaker-than-expected Q1 results.

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Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 2.1% to $78.74 while gold traded down 1.7% at $1,823.20.

Silver traded down 3.8% to $20.325 on Tuesday while copper fell 2.3% to $3.9890.

Euro zone

European shares were lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 fell 0.65%, London’s FTSE 100 fell 0.05% while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index fell 0.85%. The German DAX dropped 0.49% French CAC 40 fell 0.31% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index fell 0.51%.

Industrial production in Spain dropped 0.4% year-over-year in January versus a revised 0.7% growth in the prior month. Factory orders in Germany rose 1% month-over-month in January, while the Halifax house price index climbed by 2.1% from a year ago in February.

Asia Pacific Markets

Asian markets closed mostly mixed on Tuesday, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 gaining 0.25%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dropping 0.33% and China’s Shanghai Composite Index falling 1.11%.

Foreign exchange reserves in Hong Kong fell to $429.1 billion in February versus a six-month high of $436.5 in the prior month. Chinese foreign exchange reserves fell to $3.133 trillion at the end of February. Foreign exchange reserves in Japan fell to $1.23 trillion in February from $1.25 trillion in the previous month.

Chinese trade surplus widened to a record high of $116.88 billion in January-February combined, compared to $109.54 billion in the year-ago period. The Reserve Bank of Australia increased the cash rate by 25bps to 3.6% at its recent meeting.

Economics

• The Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index rose 4.3% month-over-month in February.
• The IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index increased 1.8 points to 46.9 in March from 45.1 in the previous month.
• Wholesale inventories dropped by 0.4% from a month ago to $929 billion in January.

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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 105,409,310 cases with around 1,146,830 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 44,688,360 cases and 530,770 deaths, while France reported over 39,639,110 COVID-19 cases with 165,070 deaths. In total, there were at least 680,764,400 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,805,880 deaths.