Category: Stock Market News

U.S. shares of Novartis AG rose in the extended session Wednesday after a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel unanimously recommended that the agency approve one of its cancer drugs. U.S.-traded Novartis shares rose 1.7% to $84.60 after hours. The company said the FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee voted 10 to 0 in favor of approving Novartis’s drug tisagenlecleucel for the treatment of children and young adults with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a type of blood cancer. The FDA is not obligated to follow the recommendations of its advisory panels but generally does.

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Mallinckrodt PLC shares rose in the extended session Wednesday after the drug maker said the Food and Drug Administration granted a special designation to one of its drugs intended to treat a rare form of muscular dystrophy. Mallinckrodt shares rose 1.8% to $44.90 after hours. The company said the FDA granted “orphan drug” status to its drug MNK-1411 for the treatment of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, or DMD. If the drug is approved, the status would give Mallinckrodt seven years of marketing exclusivity for the treatment as well as other perks like tax credits and waiver of some regulatory fees. The treatment is expected to enter mid-stage clinical trials later this year. DMD is a genetic form of muscular dystrophy that mostly affects young boys, where a certain protein that holds muscle cells together is absent.

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HP Inc. is officially the world’s largest personal-computer manufacturer again, according to independent analyses. International Data Corp. and Gartner Inc. said Wednesday afternoon in second-quarter reports that HP regained the throne it lost to Lenovo Group Ltd. in 2013. IDC reported in April that HP overtook Lenovo in the first quarter, but Gartner tracked Lenovo with a slight lead for the first three months of the year. Overall, PC sales fell year-over-year once again, with Gartner reporting a 4.3% decline and IDC, which includes Chromebooks and some other devices in its calculations, reporting a 3.3% drop from the same quarter last year. Gartner said it was the 11th consecutive quarter of year-over-year sales declines for the PC industry, and that total volume was the lowest for a full quarter since 2007. IDC’s inclusion of Chromebooks led to rosier numbers, as the analysis firm said that the lightweight laptops running software from Alphabet Inc. continued to find strong support in the education market. Both reports had the same order for the top five PC manufacturers for the second quarter: HP, Lenovo, Dell Inc., Apple Inc. and Asustek Computer Inc. , respectively.

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NRG Energy Inc.’s stock rocketed to its best-ever one-day percentage performance Wednesday, after the power plant operator revealed a “transformation plan” aimed cutting costs, slashing debt and selling assets. The stock closed up 29.39%, the biggest one-day gain since it came out of bankruptcy in late 2003. Volume ballooned to 47.4 million shares, about 11 times the full-day average. The previous biggest rally was 29.33% on Oct. 20, 2008. The stock closed at the highest level since Aug. 17, 2015. It has now run up 72% year to date, while the SPDR Utilities Select Sector ETF has gained 6.8% and the S&P 500 has climbed 9.1%.

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The Securities and Exchange Commission charged research scientist Fei Yan on Wednesday with insider trading on confidential information about Mattress Firm Holding Corp. and Stillwater Mining Company following public announcements that they would be acquired by other companies. Yan allegedly searched the internet for “how sec detect unusual trade” before making a trade that the SEC identified as suspicious through new market surveillance tools. He also allegedly attempted to conceal the trades by using his mother’s brokerage account. She lives in China and Fan also had searched the internet for instructions on “insider trading in an international account.” In a parallel action, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced criminal charges against Yan on Wednesday.

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Shares of Box Inc. were climbing 2% in after-hours trade Wednesday after the cloud storage company announced former Apple Inc. executive Stephanie Carullo as its new chief operating officer. Carullo will be taking over for Dan Levin, who has been in the position since 2010 and is also president of Box. He will remain on the board. Carullo comes to Box after leading U.S. sales for Apple’s education business. Before that, Carullo led the data center and virtualization architecture group at Cisco Systems Inc. . Shares of Box have gained 12% in the past three months, compared to the S&P 500’s gain of 4%.

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From:: Stock Market News

Shares of Box Inc. were climbing 2% in after-hours trade Wednesday after the cloud storage company announced former Apple Inc. executive Stephanie Carullo as its new chief operating officer. Carullo will be taking over for Dan Levin, who has been in the position since 2010 and is also president of Box. He will remain on the board. Carullo comes to Box after leading U.S. sales for Apple’s education business. Before that, Carullo led the data center and virtualization architecture group at Cisco Systems Inc. . Shares of Box have gained 12% in the past three months, compared to the S&P 500’s gain of 4%.

Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.

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Shares of PayPal Holdings Inc. were on track to close at a record high Wednesday after the company announced a partnership with Apple Inc . Under the partnership, consumers can use PayPal to pay for items in Apple’s App Store, Apple Music, iTunes and iBooks. The ability to pay with PayPal is available across 12 countries, including the U.S., UK and Australia. The option is available on all Apple devices. PayPal shares were climbing 4% Wednesday afternoon, reaching an intraday high of $57.44. PayPal’s highest close so far was $53.74 on June 26. PayPal shares have been on the uptick recently, with shares gaining 34% in the past three months, compared with the S&P 500’s gain of 4.3%.

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Oil prices rose Wednesday, settling at their highest level in nearly a week after the Energy Information Administration reported a second-straight weekly drop in U.S. crude supplies. Prices, however, finished below the session’s best levels as the EIA data also showed a weekly rise in U.S. production and a monthly report from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries revealed a rise in member production in June. August WTI crude rose 45 cents, or 1%, to settle $45.49 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, following gains in each of the last two sessions.

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Gold ended higher Wednesday, buoyed by U.S. political uncertainty fueled by Donald Trump Jr.’s release of email exchanges linked to a meeting with a Russian lawyer last year. Investors also digested Congressional testimony from Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, who reiterated the central bank’s “gradual” approach to raising interest rates. August gold rose $4.40, or 0.4%, to settle at $1,219.10 an ounce.

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