Mid-Day Market Update: NovaBay Pharmaceuticals Surges After Amazon Deal; Insys Therapeutics Shares Drop

Midway through trading Monday, the Dow traded up 0.68 percent to 26,161 while the NASDAQ rose 1.73 percent to 7,876. The S&P also rose, gaining 0.9 percent to 2,899.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Consumer discretionary shares rose 1.6 percent on Monday. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Universal Electronics Inc. UEIC, up 16 percent, and Shiloh Industries, Inc. SHLO, up 11 percent.

In trading on Monday, utilities shares fell by 1 percent.

Top Headline

Salesforce.com, inc. CRM is buying Tableau Software Inc DATA for about $15.7 billion. Each share of Tableau class A, B stock will be exchanged for $1.103 shares of Salesforce’s common stock.

Tableau Software is an interactive data visualization software company and Salesforce is a cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco.

Equities Trading UP

Provention Bio, Inc. PRVB shares shot up 289 percent to $16.90 after the company announced study results showing a single course of PRV-031 delayed type 1 diabetes onset in high-risk individuals by at least two years.

Shares of Vuzix Corporation VUZI got a boost, shooting up 51 percent to $3.07. Vuzix and NNTC announced fully autonomous AI-Powered face recognition system integrated on smart glasses.

NovaBay Pharmaceuticals, Inc. NBY shares were also up, gaining 595 percent to $2.21 after the company inked an agreement to sell its eye care product on Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN. NovaBay's eye care product called Avenova is designed for removal of microorganisms and debris which typically leads to meibomian gland dysfunction, dry eye and blepharitis. The company said Monday Avenova will start selling on Amazon at a price of $29.99 and without a prescription.

Equities Trading DOWN

INSYS Therapeutics, Inc. INSY shares tumbled 56 percent to $0.57 following news the company initiated a court supervised process to facilitate asset sales via Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company previously warned about a potential bankruptcy on May 10.

Shares of ReWalk Robotics Ltd. RWLK were down 19 percent to $5.55 after the company announced a direct offering of 833,000 shares at $6.60 per share for $5 million in gross proceeds.

Novavax, Inc. NVAX was down, falling 11 percent to $5.43 after the company announced updates on its licensure for ResVax. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration has recommend the company conduct an additional Phase 3 trial.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 0.4 percent to $54.23, while gold traded down 1 percent to $1,333.20.

Silver traded down 1.9 percent Monday to $14.75, while copper rose 1.3 percent to $2.6605.

Euro zone

European shares were higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 rose 0.21 percent, the Spanish Ibex Index rose 0.69 percent, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index rose 0.57 percent. Meanwhile, the German DAX climbed 0.77 percent, and the French CAC 40 rose 0.29 percent while UK shares rose 0.56 percent.

Economics

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