Stock Market Today Mid-Morning Updates

On Friday, the $Dow Jones Industrial Average(.DJI.US)$ is up by 380 points despite concerns over persistent inflation and worries on whether the Federal Reserve can get inflation under control. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said on Thursday that he cannot promise a soft landing for the economy as the central bank continues to wrestle in red-hot inflation. He also warns that getting inflation under control could cause some economic hardships but this will remain his top priority.

Shares of $Twitter(TWTR.US)$ are down today by over 11% after Elon Musk says that the Twitter deal is temporarily on hold pending details supporting the calculation that spam/fake accounts make up less than 5% of its total users. This comes after the Tesla CEO announced last month that he intends to buy Twitter for $44 billion. $MicroStrategy(MSTR.US)$ is up by over 15% today after a volatile week because of the ongoing crypto crash. Health care apparel company $FIGS Inc(FIGS.US)$ plummeted by over 20% after it missed earnings today.

Among the Dow Jones leaders, shares of Apple are up by 2.07% today while $Microsoft(MSFT.US)$ is also up by 1.97%. Meanwhile, $Walt Disney(DIS.US)$ and $Nike(NKE.US)$ are trading higher on Friday. Among the Dow financial leaders, $Visa(V.US)$ is up by 2.72% while $JPMorgan(JPM.US)$ is also up by 1.21%.

Shares of EV leader $Tesla(TSLA.US)$ are up by 5.82% on Friday. Rival EV companies like $Rivian Automotive(RIVN.US)$ are up by 11.01%. $Lucid(LCID.US)$ is also up by 13.07% today.

Dow Jones Today: U.S. Treasury Yields Rises Today Along with Bitcoin

Following the stock market opening on Friday, the S&P 500, Dow, and Nasdaq are trading higher at 1.89%, 1.17%, and 3.00%. Among exchange-traded funds, the Nasdaq 100 tracker $Invesco QQQ Trust(QQQ.US)$ is up by 2.94% while the $SPDR S&P 500 ETF(SPY.US)$ is also up by 1.91%.

The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yield ticked higher today to 2.92% and continues to be at a pandemic-era high as more investors are on the belief that the Federal Reserve will need to act more aggressively on hiking interest rates to fight inflation. Even then, there is still a concern that inflation will remain high even as the economy slows down.

Bitcoin is above $30,000 today after retreating throughout the week. This rally comes as Tether, the world's largest stablecoin, regained its peg to the dollar. Tether has lost $3 billion worth of tokens in a single day despite having always meant to be worth $1 and has sunk as low as $0.95 on Thursday. Bitcoin is down by more than 50% from its all-time high of over $68,000 in November.

Affirm Gains On Overall Solid Earnings And Upbeat Guidance; Extends Partnership With Shopify

Among the top gainers in the stock market today would be $Affirm Holdings(AFRM.US)$. By and large, this is thanks to the leading buy-now-pay-later firm reporting commendable figures in its third fiscal quarter update. According to Afirm's press release, the company reported a quarterly loss of $0.19 per share and revenue of $354.8 million. For reference, the Wall Street consensus was a loss of $0.54 per share and revenue of $344 million. Additionally, Affirm also reports that its gross merchandise volume for the quarter came in at $3.9 billion. This represents a solid 69.5% year-over-year increase. Also, the company's total active consumer count is up to 12.7 million from 11.2 million the previous quarter.

Despite its current momentum, Affirm remains hard at work on the operational front. This would be apparent as the company is extending its partnership with $Shopify(SHOP.US)$. Through this multi-year expansion, Affirm will continue to be the exclusive service provider for Shop Pay Installments in the U.S.This would be through existing integrations between Affirm's Adaptive Checkout system and Shopify's platform. The likes of which serve Shopify's millions of active users.

Commenting in further detail about this news is Affirm CCO Silvija Martincevic. She says, "Now we're bringing even more options to Shopify's merchants and their customers by serving a broader range of transactions with a wider-range of payment schedules available to their U.S. network." With Affirm seemingly kicking into high gear across the board, AFRM stock would be in focus at today's market open.