Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Peak Resorts Climbs Following Acquisition News; Cadence Bancorp Shares Plummet

Toward the end of trading Monday, the Dow traded up 0.04% to 27165.88 while the NASDAQ rose 0.7% to 8,203.33. The S&P also rose, gaining 0.31% to 2,985.80.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Information technology shares rose 1.2% on Monday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Intelligent Systems Corporation INS, up 7%, and Ideanomics, Inc. IDEX, up 8%.

In trading on Monday, consumer staples shares fell 0.4%.

Top Headline

Halliburton Company HAL reported upbeat earnings for its second quarter, while sales missed views.

Halliburton reported second quarter earnings of $0.35 per share, which beat the analyst consensus estimate of $0.30 per share. The company reported quarterly sales of $5.93 billion, versus the analyst consensus estimate of $5.97 billion.

Equities Trading UP

Taronis Technologies Inc TRNX shares shot up 75% to $0.5517 after the company received a $165 million purchase contract.

Shares of DURECT Corporation DRRX got a boost, shooting up 38% to $1.0050 after the company and Gilead entered into a license agreement for long-acting Injectable HIV Investigational products. The company will receive $25 million with the potential of obtaining up to $75 million.

Peak Resorts Inc SKIS shares were also up, gaining 113% to $10.85 after the company agreed to be acquired by Vail Resorts, Inc. MTN for $11 per share in cash.

Equities Trading DOWN

Intec Pharma Ltd. NTEC shares tumbled 81% to $0.5556 following a clinical trial readout from the company. Intec, a clinical-stage biotech that develops drugs based on its proprietary Accordion Pill platform technology, said top-line data from a pivotal Phase 3 trial dubbed ACCORDANCE did not achieve the primary endpoint.

Shares of Naked Brand Group Limited NAKD were down 25% to $0.1063 after the company priced its registered direct offering of $0.10 per share.

Cadence Bancorp CADE was down, falling 20% to $15.78 after the company reported Q2 EPS down from last year.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 1% to $56.17, while gold traded down 0.1% to $1,426.30.

Silver traded up 1.3% Monday to $16.41, while copper fell 1.1% to $2.7215.

Euro zone

European shares closed mostly higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 gained 0.13%, the Spanish Ibex Index fell 0.08%, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index climbed 0.44%. Meanwhile, the German DAX gained 0.24%, and the French CAC 40 rose 0.26% while UK shares rose 0.08%.

Economics

The Chicago Fed National Activity Index rose to a reading of -0.02 in June, versus a revised reading of -0.03 in the prior month.