Mid-Afternoon Market Update: Dow Down 450 Points; Crude Oil Falls 2.5%

Toward the end of trading Friday, the Dow traded down 1.83 percent to 24,146.50 while the NASDAQ declined 1.67 percent to 6,952.64. The S&P also fell, dropping 1.59 percent to 2,608.36.

Leading and Lagging Sectors

Friday afternoon, the real estate shares slipped by just 0.3 percent. Meanwhile, top gainers in the sector included Condor Hospitality Trust, Inc. CDOR up 5 percent, and New Senior Investment Group Inc. SNR up 3 percent.

In trading on Friday, health care shares fell 3.2 percent.

Top Headline

LVMH announced plans to buy Belmond Ltd. BEL for $3.2 billion including debt.

LVMH will pay $25 per Belmond share, representing a 40 percent premium over Belmond’s closing price on Thursday.

Equities Trading UP

Alliqua BioMedical, Inc. ALQA shares got a boost, shooting up 28 percent to $2.7300 after Adynxx announced $5.7 million in Federal Grant funding. The companies announced merger agreement in October.

Shares of Belmond Ltd. BEL shot up 40 percent to $24.75 after LVMH announced plans to purchase the company for $25 per share in cash.

Civitas Solutions, Inc. CIVI shares were also up, gaining 18 percent to $14.93 following Q4 results. Civitas Solutions posted Q4 earnings of $0.42 per share on sales of $409.485 million.

Equities Trading DOWN

Idera Pharmaceuticals, Inc. IDRA shares dropped 21 percent to $5.20 after highlighting presentation of safety and efficacy update from ILLUMINATE-204 trial of tilsotolimod and ipilimumab combo.

Shares of Draper Oakwood Technology Acquisition, Inc. DOTA were down 43 percent to $5.85 after the company announced that it has entered two backstop agreements.

Good Times Restaurants Inc. GTIM was down, falling around 22 percent to $2.96. Good Times Restaurants posted Q4 loss of $0.03 per share on sales of $26.8 million.

Commodities

In commodity news, oil traded down 2.5 percent to $51.23 while gold traded down 0.32 percent to $1,243.40.

Silver traded down 1.28 percent Friday to $14.665, while copper fell 0.33 percent to $2.759.

Eurozone

European shares closed lower today. The eurozone’s STOXX 600 fell 0.63 percent, the Spanish Ibex Index declined 0.45 percent, while Italy’s FTSE MIB Index fell 0.72 percent. Meanwhile the German DAX dropped 0.54 percent, and the French CAC 40 fell 0.88 percent while U.K. shares fell 0.47 percent.

Economics

U.S. retail sales rose 0.2 percent for November, versus economists’ expectations for a 0.4 percent increase.

U.S. industrial production increased 0.6 percent for November, versus economists’ expectations for a 0.3 percent rise.

The flash reading of U.S. manufacturing PMI dropped to 53.9 for December, compared to 55.3 in November, IHS Markit reported.

U.S. business inventories increased 0.6 percent for October.

The total number of active U.S. oil rigs slipped by 4 to 873 rigs this week, Baker Hughes Inc reported.