Courtesy of Benzinga.
Midway through trading Monday, the Dow traded up 0.74 percent to 13,427.08 while the NASDAQ rose 0.50 percent to 3,059.30. The S&P also rose, increasing 0.70 percent to 1,438.56.
As a heads up for this week, pharmaceutical stocks are set to be even more volatile than normal leading up to an FDA panel meeting on drugs from three pharmaceutical companies: NPS Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: NSPS), Aegerion Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AEGR), and Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ISIS)
Equities Trading UP Clearwire (NASDAQ: CLWR) consolidated its gains from earlier in the morning, remaining up 11.21 percent at $2.58, while trading on a massive 112 million share volume. The spike started when an offer from Softbank to buy a 70 percent stake in Sprint (NYSE: S) became official this morning. Word that Sprint is still attempting to acquire the company have prompted traders to pour more money into the stock.
Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ISIS) continued to trade up, rising 5.34 percent to $13.32 Monday in anticipation of the FDA advisory panel meeting later this week.
Shares of Workday (NYSE: WDAY) saw a boost midway through the day, trading up 8.11 percent to $52.64, riding the enthusiasm from its successful IPO on Friday.
Shares of Citigroup (NYSE: C) also continued its rise, trading up 4.49 percent to $36.31 after the company posted an earnings beat Monday morning.
Equities Trading DOWN NPS Pharma (NASDAQ: NPSP) continued to fall, trading down 5.00 percent to $10.32 in early trading as investors brace for the FDA panel meeting this week.
Sonic Automotive (NYSE: SAH) traded down as well, decreasing 7.09 percent to $18.08
Shares of Pandora (NASDAQ: P) also took a hit, falling 3.19 percent to $9.10 after Microsoft (NYSE: MSFT) announced it would be making a music storage and streaming service available with its X-box live product.
Commodities In commodity news, Oil traded down 1.23 percent to $90.73, while Gold traded down 1.39 percent to $1,735.30.
Silver traded down 0.83 percent Friday Morning to $32.84.
Euro Zone The Euro zone was fairly quiet Monday morning, besides the news of Scotland’s push to break away from the United Kingdom. In an update to the story, Reuters reported that a majority of Scots opposed the breakaway, and that the vote would occur at the end of 2014.
Economics There were a couple economic releases monday morning, the first being advanced retail sales, which came in at 1.1 percent, above the expected 0.8 percent, but slightly below the prior figure of 1.2 percent.
Retail sales less autos came in at 1.1 percent as well, above the expected 0.6 percent, and slightly higher than the previously reported number 1 percent. Retail sales ex auto & gas came in at 0.9 percent, above the expected 0.4 percent, and significantly higher than the prior figure of 0.3 percent.
Finally, the New York empire state manufacturing index came in at -6.16, below the expected -4, but slightly higher than the previous number of -10.41.
