U.S. stocks traded lower this morning, with the Dow Jones index falling around 200 points on Friday.

Following the market opening Friday, the Dow traded down 0.50% to 39,894.22 while the NASDAQ fell 0.11% to 17,147.08. The S&P 500 also fell, dropping, 0.24% to 5,471.83.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Communication services shares jumped by 0.9% on Friday.

In trading on Friday, health care fell by 0.9%.

Top Headline

Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) reported better-than-expected first-quarter financial results after the closing bell on Thursday.

Alphabet announced a 5% increase to the dividend with the quarterly payout going to 21 cents per share. The company also announced the Board of Directions authorized a $70 billion share repurchase plan on April 23.

Equities Trading UP
                   

• Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. (NASDAQ:OMEX) shares shot up 80% to $1.53. U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday to jumpstart the U.S. deep-sea mining industry. Trump seeks to secure domestic access to critical resources through this initiative and reduce America’s dependence on foreign supply chains for increasingly important commodities.
• Shares of Baijiayun Group Ltd (NASDAQ:RTC)got a boost, surging 77% to $0.3288 as the company announced plans to invest tens of millions of dollars over next five years to establish new ecosystem for autism rehabilitation.
• AGM Group Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:AGMH) shares were also up, gaining 47% to $0.0572.

Equities Trading DOWN

• Azul S.A. (NYSE:AZUL) shares dropped 45% to $0.6175.
• Shares of Coeptis Therapeutics Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:COEP) were down 33% to $8.35. Coeptis Therapeutics and Z Squared Inc. announced a merger agreement.
• Lexaria Bioscience Corp. (NASDAQ:LEXX) was down, falling 23% to $1.28 as the company announced a $2 million registered direct offering of common stock.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 0.4% to $62.55 while gold traded down 1.7% at $3,293.10.

Silver traded down 2.1% to $32.805 on Friday, while copper fell 0.9% to $4.8120.

Euro zone

European shares were higher today. The eurozone's STOXX 600 gained 0.5%, Germany's DAX 40 gained 0.8% and France's CAC 40 gained 0.7%. Spain's IBEX 35 Index gained 1.3%, while London's FTSE 100 rose 0.2%.

Asia Pacific Markets

Asian markets closed mixed on Friday, with Japan's Nikkei 225 surging 1.90%, China's Shanghai Composite falling 0.07%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index gaining 0.32% and India's BSE Sensex falling 0.74%.

Economics

U.S. consumer confidence declined to 52.20 points in April compared to 57 points in March.

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