Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Dow Falls 270 Points; Weight Watchers Shares Tumble After Q3 Results

Toward the end of trading Friday, the Dow traded down 1.07 percent to 25,109.87 while the NASDAQ declined 1.51 percent to 7,321.97. The S&P also fell, dropping 1.16 percent to 2,708.49.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Friday afternoon, the consumer discretionary shares slipped by just 0.1 percent. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Newell Brands Inc NWL up 14 percent, and El Pollo LoCo Holdings Inc LOCO up 21 percent.

In trading on Friday, information technology shares fell 2.6 percent.

Top Headline

Apple Inc. AAPL reported stronger-than-expected earnings for its fourth quarter, but issued disappointing sales guidance for the holiday period.

Apple reported earnings of $2.91 per share, beating estimates of $2.78. Sales totaled $62.9 billion, which beat estimates of $61.48 billion by 2.31 percent. This represented an increase of 21.1 percent from Q4 2017. iPhone unit sales totaled 46.9 million, which increased 29 percent year-over-yea but slightly missed analysts expectations of 47.5 million.

Apple sees Q1 sales in a range of $89-$93 billion against a $92.91 billion estimate. The company sees Q1 gross margin 38-38.5 percent.

Equities Trading UP

Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc. PACB shares shot up 67 percent to $7.52. Pacific Biosciences announced an agreement to be bought by bigger rival Illumina, Inc. ILMN in a deal valued at about $1.2 billion, or $8 per share in cash. The per share value represented a 77 percent premium over the $4.51 at which Pacific Biosciences shares closed Thursday.

Shares of L.B. Foster Company FSTR got a boost, shooting up 20 percent to $20.32 following Q3 results. L.B. Foster posted Q3 earnings of $0.47 per share on sales of $167.1 million.

El Pollo Loco Holdings, Inc. LOCO shares were also up, gaining 21 percent to $15.29 after reporting Q3 results.

Equities Trading DOWN

Puma Biotechnology, Inc. PBYI shares dropped 49 percent to $19.845 after the company's Nerlynx sales were lower than expected.

Shares of Adverum Biotechnologies, Inc. ADVM were down 29 percent to $3.24 after the company's A1AT measurements 'did not reach clinically meaningful levels of expression.'

Weight Watchers International, Inc. WTW was down, falling around 29 percent to $48.88 following Q3 earnings and sales miss.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 0.96 percent to $63.08 while gold traded down 0.4 percent to $1,233.70.

Silver traded down 0.28 percent Friday to $14.735, while copper rose 2.83 to $2.7985.

Eurozone

European shares closed mostly higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 climbed 0.28 percent, the Spanish Ibex Index rose 0.43 percent, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index rose 1.07 percent. Meanwhile the German DAX climbed 0.44 percent, and the French CAC 40 climbed 0.32 percent while U.K. shares fell 0.29 percent.

Economics

The U.S. economy added 250,000 new jobs in October, while the unemployment rate remained at 3.7 percent. Economists expected an increase of 193,000 nonfarm jobs.

U.S. trade deficit increased 1.3 percent in September to $54 billion, versus a revised $53.3 billion in August. However, economists were projecting a $53.6 billion deficit. Imports gained 1.5 percent to $266.6 billion, while exports rose 1.5 percent to $212.6 billion for September.

U.S. factory orders rose 0.7 percent for September, versus economists’ expectations for a 0.5 percent gain.

The total number of active U.S. oil rigs fell by 1 to 864 rigs this week, Baker Hughes Inc reported.