Monday, 23 March 2015 19:24
NEW YORK: US stocks were mixed in early trade Monday as drugmaker Gilead Sciences and agricultural products giant Monsanto both fell.
About 35 minutes into trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 18,176.37, up 48.72 points (0.27 percent).
The broad-based S&P 500 added 3.90 (0.19 percent) at 2,112.00, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index fell 8.16 (0.16 percent) to 5,018.25.
Gilead Sciences dropped 2.0 percent on news that it issued a warning about its hepatitis drugs after nine patients had suffered abnormally slow heartbeats, and one patient had died.
Monsanto fell 1.7 percent after the United Nations’s International Agency for Research on Cancer said that the company’s popular weedkiller Roundup is “probably” carcinogenic.
US stocks stand near record highs after a rally last week following a Federal Reserve policy statement that pledged a cautious approach to raising interest rates.
Tenet Healthcare jumped 5.0 percent as it announced a new joint venture with United Surgical Partners to provide ambulatory surgical and other services at short-stay facilities in the US.
Dow member Pfizer gained 2.1 percent after announcing that it and Eli Lilly would resume phase 3 testing for the painkiller tanezumab after the US Food and Drug Administration lifted a partial hold on it. Eli Lilly advanced 0.7 percent.
Starbucks slipped 0.2 percent as it pulled the plug on a controversial initiative that sought to spur a conversation about race that would be led by coffee-shop baristas. The coffee chain said it would promote discussion of race in other ways, such as with special publications prepared with the newspaper USA Today.
Bond prices were unchanged from Friday. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury held steady at 1.92 percent, while the 30-year stayed at 2.5 percent. Bond prices and yields move inversely.
Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2015
