Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Crude Oil Down 1.5%; Sarepta Shares Spike Higher

Toward the end of trading Tuesday, the Dow traded down 1.41 percent to 24,635.21 while the NASDAQ declined 0.86 percent to 7,680.47. The S&P also fell, dropping 0.74 percent to 2,753.32.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Tuesday afternoon, the telecommunication services shares surged 1.73 percent. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included NII Holdings, Inc. NIHD up 5 percent, and Ooma, Inc. OOMA up 5 percent.

In trading on Tuesday, industrials shares fell 1.92 percent.

Top Headline

Roche announced plans to acquire outstanding shares of Foundation Medicine, Inc. FMI for $2.4 billion.

The offer price of $137 per share represents a 29 percent premium over FMI's closing price on Monday.

Equities Trading UP

Gevo, Inc. GEVO shares shot up 80 percent to $22.9040. Gevo shares surged around 262 percent on Monday after the EPA announced it has approved up to a 16 percent blend of isobutanol for use in automobiles.

Shares of Astrotech Corporation ASTC got a boost, shooting up 196 percent to $5.77 after the company’s subsidiary, 1st Detect, announced its TRACER 1000 Explosives Trace Detector was accepted into the European Evaluation Process for airport checkpoint screening.

Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc. SRPT shares were also up, gaining 35 percent to $142.2967. Sarepta released Phase 1/2 data on its microdystrophin gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, or DMD, which showed robust levels of microdystrophin, with an average of either 38.2 percent of 53.7 percent of normal levels of the protein.

Equities Trading DOWN

PagSeguro Digital Ltd. PAGS shares dropped 11 percent to $28.63 after reporting a follow-on offering. Credit Suisse downgraded PagSeguro Digital from Neutral to Underperform.

Shares of Tellurian Inc. TELL were down 11 percent to $9.68. Tellurian priced its 12 million share offering of common stock for gross proceeds of $118.8 million.

PTC Therapeutics, Inc. PTCT was down, falling around 22 percent to $37.51 after rising 27.51 percent on Monday.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 1.58 percent to $64.81 while gold traded down 0.16 percent to $1,278.00.

Silver traded down 0.70 percent Tuesday to $16.325, while copper fell 1.87 to $3.0705.

Eurozone

European shares closed lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 dropped 0.70 percent, the Spanish Ibex Index fell 0.14 percent, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index dipped 0.07 percent. Meanwhile the German DAX dropped 1.22 percent, and the French CAC 40 fell 0.90 percent while U.K. shares fell 0.36 percent.