A damning tweet from presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton sent biotech stocks into a tailspin, temporarily dragging the COMP into the red.
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All three major indexes were up about 1 percent, with technology and financial stocks leading the gainers. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index (INDEXSP:.INX) rose 19.33 points, or 0.99 percent, to 1,977.
The New York Times reported that steep price increases for specialty drugs was partly due to companies buying old, neglected drugs and turning them into “specialty drugs”.
After the Fed left rates unchanged, the S&P 500 erased its weekly gain, with financial companies tumbling.
Shares in Australia fell by their sharpest in more than a week and led most Asian markets lower on Monday, as anxiety about the pace of global growth sent investors fleeing to safer assets, including the USA dollar.
The Nasdaq, heavy in drug and biotech names, eked out a tiny gain, while the Dow Jones industrial average gained 0.8% and the S&P 500 rose 0.5% in the stock market today.
The Federal Reserve’s decision to delay an interest rate increase last week was largely a “risk management” exercise to be sure recent market volatility would not become a drag on the economy, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart said on Monday.
Investors are now focusing on the next Fed meeting on October 27-28, though some economists now wonder whether the Fed will raise rates at all this year.
Existing-home sales fell in August by 4.8 percent, according to data from the National Association of Realtors, a bigger decline than expected. The late-week slump gave the equity gauge another period of indecision, as it capped its 10th straight week of back-and-forth results with a decline of 0.2 percent. The December contract ended $5, or 0.4%, lower at $1,132.80 per ounce.
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Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by 1,827 to 1,216, for a 1.50-to-1 ratio; on the Nasdaq, 1,492 issues fell and 1,308 advanced for a 1.14-to-1 ratio favouring decliners. The measure of market turbulence known as the VIX fell 2.1 percent Monday to 21.79.
