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Sellers are off to an early start Thursday, as 26 of the 27 Dow Jones Industrial Average components seen premarket activity are declining. Among the biggest losers, shares of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. shed 2.7%, of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. slid 2.5%, Visa Inc. slumped 2.4% and Boeing Co. gave up 2%. Apple Inc.’s stock , which was the most-active with over 184,000 shares traded; fell 1%. The lone gainer was Cisco Systems Inc.’s stock , which climbed 5.5%, after the company reported late Wednesday better-than-expected fiscal second-quarter results and raised its dividend.

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Proteostasis Therapeutics Inc. said Thursday its initial public offering of 6.25 million shares priced at $8 a share, well below the expected per-share range of $12 to $14. The amount of shares the biopharmaceutical company sold was above the 3.85 million shares they had expected to sell, according to a regulatory filing out earlier this week. The company raised $50 million in its IPO, compared with expectations of $46.2 million to $53.9 million at the previously-expected number of shares and expected price range. Leerink Partners and RBC Capital Markets acted as joint book-running managers of the IPO. The stock is expected to being trading on Nasdaq Thursday, with the ticker symbol “PTI.”

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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Avon Products Inc. reported on Thursday a fourth-quarter loss that widened to $333.4 million, or 76 cents a share, from $330.7 million, or 75 cents a share, in the same period a year ago. Excluding non-recurring items, such as restructuring costs, the per-share loss was 16 cents, missing the FactSet consensus for a per-share loss of 11 cents, as operating margin declined 2.8 percentage points to 58.7%. Revenue fell 20% to $1.61 billion, below the FactSet consensus of $1.85 billion, as beauty sales dropped 21% and fashion & home sales declined 14%. Excluding the impact of currency moves, sales would have increased 3%. Average orders decreased 1%. The company said it expects the transformation plan announced in January to produce cost savings of $350 million after three years. The stock, which was still inactive in premarket trade, has tumbled 20% year to date through Wednesday, but was still up 5.2% over the past three months, while the S&P 500 has lost 11% in three months.

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Gold prices rallied on Thursday as investors tried to escape the global market rout by hiding out in safe-haven assets. Gold for April delivery jumped $30.10, or 2.5%, to $1,224.70 an ounce, setting it on track for the highest close since May last year. The positive session for the metal came as equities tanked in Asia and Europe and U.S. stock futures pointed to a sharply lower open. “Renewed ETF inflows have been lending support to the price surge: in the first eight days of trading in February, just as much gold has flowed into the ETFs as did in the whole of January,” analysts at Commerzbank said in a note. They also noted that Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen during her congressional testimony on Wednesday signaled that the central bank could postpone further rate increases if the current jitters in global markets persist. That drove down the dollar, with the greenback slumping to the lowest level against the yen since late 2014. A weaker U.S. currency tends to support dollar-denominated commodities, such as gold, as they become cheaper for foreign currency holders.

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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From:: Stock Market News

U.S. stocks were set to continue the recent selloff on Thursday, with futures tumbling early premarket amid a wider global flight from risk assets. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average slumped 296 points, or 1.9%, to 15,570, while those for the S&P 500 index tanked 35.45 points, or 1.9%, to 1,811.25. Futures for the Nasdaq 100 index erased 91.50 points, or 2.30%, to 3,876.25. Thursday’s weakness follows a late-session slump in the U.S. on Wednesday when investors took the view that Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen wasn’t dovish enough in her http://www.marketwatch.com/story/yellen-says-financial-conditions-less-supportive-to-growth-2016-02-10. The Fed boss will return to Capitol Hill on Thursday at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. In Europe, stock markets were also under selling pressure, with the Stoxx Europe 600 index heading for its lowest close since 2013. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index slid 3.9% on its return of trading from the Chinese New Year.

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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From:: Stock Market News

The dollar plunged to levels not seen in more than a year against the yen on Thursday as investors took the view that Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen wasn’t dovish enough in her testimony on Capitol Hill. The dollar sank to ¥111.55 from ¥113.60 late Wednesday after touching a 15-month low in that session. Simon Smith, chief economist at FxPro said that the dollar/yen level is the lowest since October 2014. The euro traded at $1.1329 from $1.1269 late Wednesday. Yellen will return to Capitol Hill on Thursday. Dow industrial futures tumbled 300 points and oil prices dropped below $27 a barrel as gold prices surged $22.60 to $1,217.20 an ounce. Meanwhile, the Swedish Riksbank cut its repo rate to a negative 0.5% from a negative 0.35%, citing low inflation risks, and the Swedish krona fell against the dollar, buying 8.4346 krona. Read: Worried about stocks? Keep an eye on the yen

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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From:: Stock Market News