Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Crude Oil Up 1%; Dare Bioscience Shares Spike Higher

Toward the end of trading Monday, the Dow traded up 0.1 percent to 25,875.10 while the NASDAQ climbed 0.23 percent to 7,705.94. The S&P also rose, gaining 0.25 percent to 2,829.48.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Monday afternoon, the energy shares climbed 1.2 percent. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included American Midstream Partners, LP AMID up 28 percent, and Smart Sand, Inc. SND up 11 percent.

In trading on Monday, communication services shares fell 0.8 percent.

Top Headline

Fidelity National Information Servcs Inc FIS reached an agreement to buy Worldpay, Inc. WP, an e-commerce and payments company for around $34 billion.

The combination of FIS and Worldpay will create a new entity that will offer a best-in-class enterprise banking, payments, capital markets and global e-commerce capabilities, the companies said in a press release. The companies combined for $12.3 billion in pro forma annual revenue in 2018.

Equities Trading UP

Daré Bioscience, Inc. DARE shares got a boost, shooting up 150 percent to $2.2531 following positive results for its vaginally administered tamoxifen. Dare Bioscience said Monday its DARE-VVA1, a proprietary formulation of tamoxifen for vaginal administration being evaluated as a potential treatment option for vulvar and vaginal atrophy (VVA) in patients with hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer, showed significant improvements in reducing vaginal pH and vaginal dryness without significant systemic absorption of tamoxifen.

Shares of Dermira, Inc. DERM shot up 76 percent to $12.02 after an announcement from the company regarding a midstage trial involving its investigational candidate for atopic dermatitis. Dermira reported positive results ahead of the market open Monday from a Phase 2b dose-ranging study of lebrikizumab that is being evaluated for treating adult patients with moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis.

PhaseBio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. PHAS shares were also up, gaining 60 percent to $5.96 after the New England Journal of Medicine published the positive Phase 1 results for the company's PB2452.

Equities Trading DOWN

Aerpio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ARPO shares dropped 71 percent to $1.24 after the company announced that its Phase 2 TIME-2b study of AKB-9778 did not meet its primary endpoint.

Shares of NII Holdings, Inc. NIHD were down 27 percent to $2.3350 after the company reported worse-than-expected Q4 sales results. The company also announced the sale of Nextel Brazil to America Movil.

FutureFuel Corp. FF was down, falling around 22 percent to $13.99 after the company reported Q4 EPS of $0.04, down from $0.36 last year and Q4 sales of $65.51 million, down from $75.26 million last year.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded up 1.01 percent to $59.11 while gold traded down 0.1 percent to $1,302.50.

Silver traded up 0.1 percent Monday to $15.335, while copper rose 0.2 percent to $2.9105.

Eurozone

European shares closed mostly higher today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 gained 0.27 percent, the Spanish Ibex Index rose 0.72 percent, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index rose 0.90 percent. Meanwhile the German DAX declined 0.25 percent, and the French CAC 40 gained 0.14 percent while U.K. shares rose 0.98 percent.

Economics

The National Association of Home Builders’ housing market index was unchanged at a reading of 62 for March. However, economists were expecting a reading of 63.