Dow Drops 1%; US Producer Prices Rise In April

U.S. stocks traded lower this morning, with the Dow Jones dropping over 1% on Thursday.

Following the market opening Thursday, the Dow traded down 1.15% to 33,144.32 while the NASDAQ fell 0.17% to 12,284.97. The S&P 500, also fell, dropping, 0.62% to 4,112.09.

Check This Out: Bitcoin, Ethereum Record Losses Following PPI Data; Pepe Becomes Top Loser

Leading and Lagging Sectors

• Communication services shares rose by 1.7% on Thursday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Magnite, Inc. MGNI, up 20%, and Taboola.com Ltd. TBLA, up 7%.
• In trading on Thursday, energy shares fell 1.7%.

Top Headline

Producer prices for final demand rose 0.2% month-over-month in April versus a revised 0.4% decline in the prior month.

Equities Trading UP

• VCI Global Limited VCIG shares shot up 35% to $4.40. VCI Global reported application for dual listing on Upstream.
• Shares of Minim, Inc. MINM got a boost, shooting 34% to $6.17.
• Absolute Software Corporation ABST shares were also up, gaining 32% to $11.36 after the company announced it will be acquired by Crosspoint Capital Partners for an enterprise value of $870 million.

Equities Trading DOWN

• ImmunityBio, Inc. IBRX shares dropped 51% to $3.05 after the company announced it received a complete response letter from the FDA on May 9th regarding its BLA for Anktiva in combination with Bacillus Calmette-Guérin.
• Shares of Guardforce AI Co., Limited GFAI were down 29% to $5.18 after the company announced pricing of a $12 million underwritten public offering of ordinary shares.
• Babylon Holdings Limited BBLN was down, falling 27% to $1.50. BTIG downgraded Babylon Holdings from Neutral to Sell.

Also Check This Out: Esperion Therapeutics And 2 Other Stocks Under $3 Insiders Are Aggressively Buying

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 1.7% to $71.36 while gold traded down 0.9% at $2,019.20.

Silver traded down 4.6% to $24.475 on Thursday while copper fell 3.9% to $3.6910.

Euro zone

European shares were lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 dropped 0.3%, London’s FTSE 100 fell 0.7% while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index fell 0.2% The German DAX fell 0.6%, French CAC 40 fell 0.2% and Italy’s FTSE MIB Index fell 1%.

The Bank of England increased the bank rate by 25bps to 4.5%, in line with expectations.

Asia Pacific Markets

Asian markets closed mixed on Thursday, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 gaining 0.02%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dropping 0.09% and China’s Shanghai Composite Index falling 0.29%. India’s S&P BSE Sensex slipped 0.1%.

China's annual inflation rate eased to 0.1% in April from 0.7% in the prior month, while producer prices dropped 3.6% year-over-year in April. Vehicle sales in China jumped 82.7% year-over-year to 2.16 million in April. The gauge for Japan's service sector sentiment rose 1.3 points to 54.6 in April. Japan's current account surplus fell to JPY 2,278.1 billion in March from JPY 3,235.3 billion in the year-ago month.

Economics

• Producer prices for final demand rose 0.2% month-over-month in April versus a revised 0.4% decline in the prior month.
• U.S. initial jobless claims rose by 22,000 to 264,000 in the week ending May 6, above market estimates of 245,000.

Now Read This: Wall Street's Most Accurate Analysts Say Sell These 3 Tech Stocks With Over 3% Dividend Yields

COVID-19 Update

The U.S. has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world, reporting a total of 106,787,010 cases with around 1,162,660 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 44,976,590 cases and 531,730 deaths, while France reported over 40,029,700 COVID-19 cases with 166,860 deaths. In total, there were at least 688,091,300 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 6,873,000 deaths.