U.S. stocks traded lower this morning, with the Nasdaq Composite falling more than 1% on Thursday.

Following the market opening Thursday, the Dow traded down 0.50% to 45,889.75 while the NASDAQ fell 1.38% to 22,187.39. The S&P 500 also fell, dropping, 0.94% to 6,575.35.

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Leading and Lagging Sectors

Consumer staples shares jumped by 0.5% on Thursday.

In trading on Thursday, communication services stocks fell by 1.5%.

Top Headline

Initial jobless claims declined by 14,000 from the previous week to 218,000 in the third week of September, compared to market estimates of 235,000.

Equities Trading UP

PepGen Inc. ( PEPG ) shares shot up 107% to $5.51. The company announced the pricing of its $100 million public offering of 31,250,000 shares at $3.20 per share.

Shares of SciSparc Ltd. ( SPRC ) got a boost, surging 79% to $6.86 after the company announced plans to launch a quantum computing-enabled 3D protein modeling initiative for drug discovery.

Plus Therapeutics, Inc. ( PSTV ) shares were also up, gaining 40% to $0.5640 after the company announced a national coverage agreement with UnitedHealthcare for its CNSide cerebrospinal fluid assay for metastatic CNS cancer.

Equities Trading DOWN

SeaStar Medical Holding Corporation ( ICU ) shares dropped 50% to $0.6226. SeaStar Medical ( ICU ) reported DSMB recommendation to continue the NEUTRALIZE-AKI pivotal trial in adult acute kidney injury.

Shares of Erayak Power Solution Group Inc. ( RAYA ) were down 31% to $0.0493 after jumping over 15% on Wednesday.

Cemtrex, Inc. ( CETX ) was down, falling 29% to $0.4470 after the company approved a 1-for-15 reverse stock split.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 0.5% to $64.66 while gold traded down 0.1% at $3,766.60.

Silver traded up 1.4% to $44.805 on Thursday, while copper fell 0.6% to $4.7865.

Euro zone

European shares were lower today. The eurozone's STOXX 600 fell 0.8%, while Spain's IBEX 35 Index fell 0.3%. London's FTSE 100 fell 0.5%, Germany's DAX 40 dipped 1% and France's CAC 40 fell 0.8% during the session.

Asia Pacific Markets

Asian markets closed mostly lower on Thursday, with Japan's Nikkei 225 gaining 0.27%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng declining 0.13%, China's Shanghai Composite falling 0.01% and India's BSE Sensex falling 0.68%.

Economics

U.S. wholesale inventories declined by 0.2% month-over-month to $898.8 billion in August, compared to market estimates of a 0.1% increase.

U.S. durable goods orders climbed by 2.9% month-over-month to $312.1 billion in August, compared to a revised 2.7% decline in July and versus market estimates of a 0.5% fall.

The U.S. trade deficit in goods shrank by $17.3 billion month-over-month to $85.5 billion in August, compared to market estimates of $95.65 billion.

Initial jobless claims declined by 14,000 from the previous week to 218,000 in the third week of September, compared to market estimates of 235,000.

The U.S. economy grew by an annualized rate of 3.8% in the second quarter, up from 3.3% in the second estimate.

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