Hillary Clinton’s tweet about the “outrageous” prices for biotech drugs sent the Nasdaq spiraling lower mid-morning, taking the rest of the market off its highs in sympathy.
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Stocks rose in late trading, rebounding from losses late last week, with gains in tech and financial shares, but a big drop in biotech shares limited the advance.
Shares of biotech companies fell after US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said she would announce a plan to stop “price gouging” for specialty drugs.
All three major indexes were up about 1 percent, with technology and financial stocks leading the gainers.
Existing home sales fell 4.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.31 million units. Following Mrs. Clinton’s remark, which referenced a New York Times article published Sunday that focused on a certain drug’s sharp price increase, the biotech index started its tumble.
Friday’s sell off left the Dow down 289 points one day after the Federal Reserve opted to keep interest rates unchanged on concerns about global economic growth and low inflation.
US stocks closed higher on Monday as investors tried to look beyond the uncertain timing of a possible interest rate increase by the Federal Reserve. Looking ahead to the rest of this week, Wall Street will hear more from Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart – but that’s just the prelude to a Thursday speech from Fed Chair Janet Yellen.
At 1:09 p.m. ET (1709 GMT) the Dow Jones industrial average was up 47.83 points, or 0.29 percent, at 16,432.41, the S&P 500 was up 2.62 points, or 0.13 percent, at 1,960.65 and the Nasdaq composite was down 18.20 points, or 0.38 percent, at 4,809.02.
Biogen fell 5.6 percent to Dollars 297.16 and Gilead was down 2.5 percent at USD 105.74.
Investors are now focusing on the next Fed meeting on October . 27-28, though a growing number of economists now wonder whether the Fed will raise rates at all this year. The two weakest Dow stocks were Merck, down 2.2 per cent, and Pfizer, down 1.3 per cent.
Semiconductor company Atmel surged 12.7 percent on news it agreed to be acquired by Britain’s Dialog Semiconductor (Xetra: 927200 – news) for $4.6 billion.
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Tuesday’s data includes the FHFA house price index (expected +0.4%), and the Richmond Fed manufacturing index for September (expected 3.0 from 0.0).
