U.S. stocks traded slightly lower this morning. Following the market opening Friday, the Dow traded down 0.06% to 39,758.88 while the NASDAQ fell 0.10% to 16,385.60. The S&P 500 also fell, dropping, 0.01% to 5,241.33.
Check This Out: These 3 Risk Off Stocks With Over 3% Dividend Yields Are Recommended By Wall Street’s Most Accurate Analysts
Leading and Lagging Sectors
Utilities shares jumped by 0.5% on Friday.
In trading on Friday, consumer discretionary shares fell by 0.9%.
Top Headline
FedEx Corporation FDX reported better-than-expected earnings for its third quarter and authorized a new $5 billion share repurchase program on Thursday.
FedEx reported quarterly earnings of $3.86 per share which beat the analyst consensus estimate of $3.45 by 11.88% and represents a 13.2% increase over earnings of $3.41 per share from the same period last year. Quarterly sales came in at $21.7 billion, missing the analyst consensus estimate of $22.04 billion, according to data from Biedex Markets Pro.
Equities Trading UP
Murano Global Investments PLC MRNO shares shot up 152% to $24.39 after falling 46% on Thursday.
Shares of Nova LifeStyle, Inc. NVFY got a boost, surging 106% to $3.80 after gaining around 22% on Thursday.
BIOLASE, Inc. BIOL shares were also up, gaining 63% to $0.2452 after the company reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings results.
Equities Trading DOWN
BYND Cannasoft Enterprises Inc. BCAN shares dropped 38% to $2.25. BYND Cannasoft said that the previously announced 1-for-190 reverse stock split of its outstanding shares of common stock has been made effective today, March 22, 2024.
Shares of Sintx Technologies, Inc. SINT were down 32% to $0.0922 after the company announced a proposed public offering of common stock.
Ispire Technology Inc. ISPR was down, falling 31% to $5.64 after the company announced the pricing of its public offering of 2.05 million shares of common stock at $6.00 per share.
Commodities
In commodity news, oil traded up 0.1% to $81.13 while gold traded down 0.8% at $2,168.00.
Silver traded down 1% to $24.755 on Friday, while copper fell 1.1% to $4.0135.
Euro zone
European shares were mostly higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 gained 0.1%, London’s FTSE 100 jumped 0.8% while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index rose 0.7% The German DAX rose 0.1% French CAC 40 fell 0.1% while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index gained 0.1%.
The Ifo Business Climate indicator for Germany climbed to 87.8 in March from February’s revised reading of 85.7. German import prices declined 5.9% year-over-year in January.
Retail sales volumes in the UK came in unchanged for February, while UK’s GfK Consumer Confidence indicator came in flat at -21 in March.
Asia Pacific Markets
Asian markets closed mixed on Friday, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 gaining 0.18%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index falling 2.16%, China’s Shanghai Composite Index falling 0.95% and India’s S&P BSE Sensex gaining 0.26%.
Foreign direct investment into China dipped by 19.9% year-over-year to CNY 215.1 billion during the first two months of the year. The annual inflation rate in Japan accelerated to 2.8% in February from 2.2% a month ago.
Economics
The Baker Hughes rig count report for the recent week will be released at 1:00 p.m. ET.
