The major averages are stronger to start the week, catching a solid, but delayed, risk-on tailwind from Friday's blowout employment report.
ECONOMIC EVENTS: On Friday while the market was closed for trading, it was reported that U.S. nonfarm payrolls climbed 916,000 in March and that the unemployment rate fell to 6.0% from 6.2%. This morning, the final Markit services PMI for March was bumped up to 60.4 after edging up 0.2 ticks to 60.0 in the preliminary reading. The ISM services index surged 8.4 points to 63.7 in March to hit a new record high. Factory orders declined 0.8% in February, breaking a string of nine straight monthly gains.
TOP NEWS: Shares of Tesla (TSLA) are 5% higher after the company announced while the market was closed for a holiday on Friday that its first quarter production and deliveries topped consensus expectations.
GameStop (GME) shares initially responded with a selloff after the company announced that it has filed a prospectus supplement with the U.S. SEC under which it may offer and sell up to a maximum of 3.5M shares of its common stock from time to time through an "at-the-market" equity offering program. However, the stock has recovered to be down only about 3% near noon. The game retailer also reported that its total global sales increased approximately 11% for the first nine-weeks of fiscal 2021 compared to the same period of last year.
In COVID-19 news, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) announced on Saturday that it is assuming full responsibility regarding the manufacturing of drug substance for its COVID-19 vaccine at the Emergent BioSolutions (EBS) Bayview facility. Separately, on Friday Emergent BioSolutions announced that topline data from a trial of its investigational SARS-CoV-2 immune globulin intravenous, or COVID-HIG, for the treatment of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 showed that the addition of anti-SARS-CoV-2 hyperimmunoglobulin to standard of care, inclusive of remdesivir, for hospitalized adult COVID-19 patients with symptoms for less than 12 days did not provide clinical benefit when compared to standard of care plus placebo.
The U.S. Supreme Court reversed and remanded a prior court's ruling, stating that Alphabet's (GOOGL) Google did not commit copyright infringement when it used Oracle's (ORCL) code in a previous version of its Android operating system. Dorian Daley, General Counsel of Oracle, stated following today's Supreme Court decision: "The Google platform just got bigger and market power greater. The barriers to entry higher and the ability to compete lower. They stole Java and spent a decade litigating as only a monopolist can. This behavior is exactly why regulatory authorities around the world and in the United States are examining Google's business practices."
MAJOR MOVERS: Among the noteworthy gainers was dMY Technology II (DMYD), which jumped 33% after Genius Sports announced a multi-year strategic partnership with the NFL to be the exclusive distributor of official league data. dMY is in the process of merging with Genius Sports Group (GENI) to bring the company public. Also higher was AMC Entertainment (AMC), which gained 14% after B. Riley analyst Eric Wold upgraded the stock to Buy from Neutral after an "impressive" weekend at the box office.
Among the notable losers was Molecular Templates (MTEM), which declined 27% after it decided to discontinue development of MT-3724. Also lower was Acadia (ACAD), which fell 17% after receiving a complete response letter from the FDA regarding its supplemental new drug application for Nuplazid indicating the application cannot be approved in its present form.
INDEXES: Near midday, the Dow was up 422.29, or 1.27%, to 33,575.50, the Nasdaq was up 194.26, or 1.44%, to 13,674.37, and the S&P 500 was up 59.85, or 1.49%, to 4,079.72.
