Mid-Day Market Update: NASDAQ Down Over 1%; China Lending Shares Spike Higher

Midway through trading Monday, the Dow traded down 0.65 percent to 26,275.61 while the NASDAQ declined 1.28 percent to 7,689.14 . The S&P also fell, dropping 0.63 percent to 2,867.47 .

Leading and Lagging Sectors

On Monday, the real estate shares rose 1.15 percent. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Select Income REIT SIR up 4 percent, and Innovative Industrial Properties, Inc. IIPR up 3 percent.

In trading on Monday, information technology shares fell 0.8 percent.

Top Headline

ENSCO PLC ESV announced plans to buy Rowan Companies PLC RDC in an all-stock deal valued at $2.38 billion.
Rowan shareholders will receive 2.215 Ensco shares for each Rowan share owned. The combined company will have an enterprise value of around $12 billion.

Equities Trading UP

India Globalization Capital, Inc. IGC shares shot up 34 percent to $5.4301.

Shares of China Lending Corporation CLDC got a boost, shooting up 141 percent to $1.93 after the company earlier reported it is cooperating with Zhejiang Lixin Holding to support a restructuring or sale.

GOL Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes S.A. GOL shares were also up, gaining 15 percent to $7.38. GOL Linhas expects Q3 operating margin of 5.0 percent to 5.5 percent and EBITDA margin of 11.0 percent to 11.5 percent.

Equities Trading DOWN

Menlo Therapeutics Inc. MNLO shares dropped 34 percent to $6.75 after the company disclosed that its Phase 2 study of MTI-110 missed primary and secondary endpoints.

Shares of Altimmune, Inc. ALT were down 32 percent to $4.9390 after the company earlier reported a $25 million registered direct offering at $5.40 per unit. Altimmune presented an oral abstract on its intranasal influenza vaccine NasoVax at the IDWeek conference held in San Francisco over the weekend. The presentation made Oct. 6 showed that NasoVAX was well-tolerated and elicited comparable antibody responses and nearly sixfold higher cellular immune response than Sanofi's Fluzone injectable influenza vaccine.

iRobot Corporation IRBT was down, falling around 10 percent to $96.07. Piper Jaffray downgraded iRobot from Overweight to Neutral.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 0.78 percent to $73.76 while gold traded down 1.31 percent to $1,189.80.

Silver traded down 2.31 percent Monday to $14.31, while copper rose 0.02 to $2.7635.

Eurozone

European shares were lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 declined 1.06 percent, the Spanish Ibex Index fell 0.5 percent, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index slipped 2.52 percent. Meanwhile the German DAX dropped 1.12 percent, and the French CAC 40 fell 1.07 percent while U.K. shares fell 1.08 percent.

Economics

On the economics calendar Monday, there is no important data due out.