Mid-day market update: Express rises following Q3 earnings, Context Therapeutics shares plummet

Midway through trading Thursday, the Dow traded up 1.37% to 34,488.64 while the NASDAQ rose 0.01% to 15,256.08. The S&P also rose, gaining 0.85% to 4,551.45.

The U.S. has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world, reporting a total of 49,573,120 cases with around 805,000 deaths. India confirmed a total of at least 34,606,540 cases and 469,720 deaths, while Brazil reported over 22,105,870 COVID-19 cases with 615,020 deaths. In total, there were at least 263,915,360 cases of COVID-19 worldwide with more than 5,245,540 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Financials shares climbed 2.2% on Thursday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included CNFinance Holdings Limited CNF +9.86% (Get Free Alerts for CNF), up 8% and Medallion Financial Corp. MFIN +6.65% (Get Free Alerts for MFIN) up 6%.

In trading on Thursday, information technology shares fell 0.2%.

Top Headline

Dollar General Corporation DG -2.94% reported better-than-expected earnings for its third quarter on Thursday.

Dollar General reported quarterly earnings of $2.08 per share, beating analysts’ estimates of $2.01 per share. The company’s quarterly sales came in at $8.50 billion, versus expectations of $8.49 billion.

Dollar General said it sees FY21 earnings of $9.90 to $10.20 per share.

Equities Trading UP

Express, Inc. EXPR +9.76% shares shot up 13% to $3.81 after the company posted better-than-expected earnings for its third quarter.

Shares of Biofrontera Inc. BFRI +32.22% got a boost, shooting 29% to $5.58. Biofrontera announced Notice of Allowance for U.S. patent titled 'Illumination for Photodynamic Therapy.'

CF Acquisition Corp. VI CFVI +14.4% shares were also up, gaining 19% to $11.65 following news of a SPAC merger deal with video platform Rumble. A filing issued by Rumble Thursday highlighted Donald Trump and actor Russell Brand among its influencer currently utilizing the platform.

Equities Trading DOWN

Kirkland's, Inc. KIRK -24.3% shares tumbled 29% to $14.56 after the company reported worse-than-expected Q3 results.

Shares of Context Therapeutics Inc. CNTX -25.28% were down 29% to $5.09 after the company announced a private placement of $31.25 million. The placement includes 5 million shares together with warrants to purchase 5 million shares.

Tantech Holdings Ltd TANH -57.61% was down, falling 58% to $0.6310 after the company priced 21,120,509 share common stock offering at $0.65 per share.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 0.5% to $65.89, while gold traded down 0.9% to $1,768.70.

Silver traded down 0.1% Thursday to $22.31 while copper rose 0.7% to $4.2770.

Euro zone

European shares were lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 fell 1.23%, the Spanish Ibex Index fell 1.82% and the German DAX 30 dropped 1.39%. Meanwhile, the London’s FTSE 100 fell 0.57%, French CAC 40 dipped 1.2% and Italy’s FTSE MIB dipped 1.35%.

The Eurozone unemployment rate fell to 7.3% in October, while producer prices rose 5.4% from a month ago in October. The unemployment rate in Italy rose to 9.4% in October from 9.2% in the earlier month, while number of people registered as unemployed in Spain fell by 74,381 to 3.183 million in November.

Economics

Job cuts announced by companies dropped 34.8% from a month earlier to 14,875 in November.

US initial jobless claims increased to 222,000 in the week ending November 27th, versus 194,000 in the prior period.

US natural-gas supplies dropped 59 billion cubic feet last week, the Energy Information Administration said.