U.S. stocks traded lower midway through trading, with the Nasdaq Composite falling more than 200 points on Friday.

The Dow traded down 0.28% to 52,407.20 while the NASDAQ dipped 0.80% to 25,674.10. The S&P 500 also fell, dropping, 0.51% to 7,495.26.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Energy shares jumped by 1.4% on Friday.

In trading on Friday, communication services stocks fell by 3.1%.

Top Headline

Travelers Companies (NYSE:TRV) reported better-than-expected second-quarter financial results.

Travelers reported quarterly earnings of $10.04 per share which beat the analyst consensus estimate of $5.38 per share. The company reported quarterly sales of $12.153 billion which beat the analyst consensus estimate of $11.346 billion.

Equities Trading UP
         

• Southland Holdings Inc (NYSE:SLND) shares shot up 51% to $1.03 after the company’s joint venture was awarded a contract for the Winnipeg North End Sewage Treatment Plant Upgrade.
• Shares of Sadot Group Inc (NASDAQ:SDOT) got a boost, surging 44% to $20.55 after the company announced plans to acquire TradeIQ predictive-intelligence software layer from Litial for $6 million.
• Callan JMB Inc (NASDAQ:CJMB) shares were also up, gaining 41% to $1.21 following the announcement that Callan JMB signed a strategic partnership with Alabama State University to build an integrated pharmaceutical manufacturing ecosystem.

Equities Trading DOWN

• Intuitive Surgical Inc (NASDAQ:ISRG) shares dropped 11% to $359.64 after the company reported second-quarter financial results and during a conference call, an executive said that the China environment remains a challenge. BTIG and Baird lowered their respective price targets on the stock.
• Shares of Laser Photonics Corp (NASDAQ:LASE) were down 20% to $0.93. Laser Photonics announced exercise of warrants for $2.5 million gross proceeds.
• Regenxbio Inc (NASDAQ:RGNX) was down, falling 15% to $9.54 after the company announced the pricing of its offering of 10,003,889 shares at $9.00 per share and 1,111,111 pre-funded warrants at $8.9999 per warrant.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 4% to $82.06 while gold traded up 0.7% at $4,019.40.

Silver traded down 0.1% to $56.17 on Friday, while copper fell 1.4% to $6.2530.

Euro zone

European shares were mostly lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 declined 0.5%, while Spain’s IBEX 35 Index fell 0.5% London’s FTSE 100 rose 0.2%, Germany’s DAX declined 0.5%, while France’s CAC 40 dipped 0.5%.

Asia Pacific Markets

Asian markets closed mostly lower on Friday, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 dipping 4.03%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index falling 1.78%, China’s Shanghai Composite dipping 3.05% and India’s BSE Sensex gaining 1.25%.

Economics

• U.S. industrial production increased 0.1% month-over-month in June, in-line with May’s pace, but down from market estimates of 0.2% growth.
• Housing starts surged 19% to an annualized rate of 1427 thousand units in June, while building permits fell by 3% month-over-month to an annual rate of 1.367 million.
• U.S. import prices rose by 0.3% month-over-month in June, versus the revised 1.7% gain in May.
• U.S. export prices declined 0.6% month-over-month in June, following a revised 1.2% gain in May.

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