>>> US; After Hours Summary: SCS -10%, AOBC +6%



After Hours Summary: SCS -10%, AOBC +6%, ORCL +4.6% following earnings/guidance

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: AOBC +6.1%, ORCL +4.6%

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: TWNK +1.5% (initiated with Buy at DA Davidson), CGC +0.8% (announces shareholder approval in connection with proposed Acreage acquisition; provides update on American hemp and CBD operations), VTR +0.4% (upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Citigroup)

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: SCS -10%

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: CYRX -8.4% (announces public offering of common stock; size not disclosed), ELOX -4.8% (files preliminary prospectus supplement for common stock offering), LAND -4% (to sell shares of common stock in underwritten public offering), SRRK -3.9% (prices offering of 3 mln shares of common stock at $15.00 per share), DB -1.5% (lower in after hours on NYTimes report suggesting money-laundering related investigation), TWO -0.5% (declared Q2 dividend of $0.40/share of common stock, prior $0.47/share)

>>> USClose



Closing Stock Market Summary

The stock market finished with modest gains on Wednesday after the Fed kept rates unchanged and indicated it was more open to lower rates in upcoming meetings. The 0.3% gain in the S&P 500 left the benchmark index less than 1.0% from its record close. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average increased 0.2%, the Nasdaq Composite increased 0.4%, and the Russell 2000 increased 0.4%. 

The FOMC's policy directive came in largely as expected. The fed funds rate was unchanged, the word "patient" was removed, and the directive noted that the Fed will act as appropriate to sustain the economic expansion amid increased uncertainties to the outlook. St. Louis Fed President James Bullard was the lone dissident among voting members, preferring to lower the fed funds rate by 25 basis points.

The Fed's updated dot plot showed a divided stance in policy for the remainder of the year, but it did show the Fed is leaning toward a rate cut in 2020. Eight voting members indicated they were in favor of a rate cut in 2019, while eight preferred to keep rates unchanged. One member forecast a rate hike. Nevertheless, the fed funds futures market now sees a 100% implied likelihood of a rate cut in July. 

The major averages barely budged from their flat lines prior to the rate decision and wavered with modest gains afterwards. Most S&P 500 sectors finished higher, led by the defensive-oriented health care (+1.0%), utilities (+0.8%), and real estate (+0.7%) sectors. The materials (-0.5%), energy (-0.2%), and financials (-0.2%) sectors underperformed. 

U.S. Treasury yields fell sharply after the release of the directive and took a leg lower during Fed Chair Powell's follow-up press conference.

The fed funds-sensitive 2-yr yield dropped nine basis points to 1.75% after touching 1.90% at its high. The benchmark 10-yr yield declined three basis points to 2.03% after touching 2.10% at its high. The U.S. Dollar Index declined 0.4% to 97.25. WTI crude declined 0.3% to $53.99/bbl.

In corporate news, Adobe Systems (ADBE 291.21, +14.43, +5.2%) reported upbeat earnings results, helping investors overlook its downside Q3 guidance. U.S. Steel (X 15.17, +0.59, +4.1%) lowered its Q2 EPS guidance due to softening end market demand, but shares pushed higher as investors presumably viewed the news as already being priced in. 

Separately, the weekly MBA Mortgage Applications, which was Wednesday's lone economic report, declined 3.4% following a 26.8% surge in the prior week.

Looking ahead, investors will receive the following reports on Thursday: weekly Initial and Continuing Claims , the Current Account Balance for the first quarter, the Philadelphia Fed Index for June, and the Conference Board's Leading Economic Index for May. 

  • Nasdaq Composite +20.4% YTD
  • S&P 500 +16.7% YTD
  • Russell 2000 +15.4% YTD
  • Dow Jones Industrial Average +13.6% YTD

FT : Technology can propel healthcare out of the Middle Ages

Technology can propel healthcare out of the Middle Ages
Engineers today are developing extraordinary abilities to understand and intervene with physiology

The biomedical scientist and entrepreneur Craig Venter recently described today’s approach to healthcare as “medieval”. This is not entirely fair; we no longer rely on astrologers for diagnosis or vendors of snake oil for drug discovery. Nevertheless, he makes an important point: we could do much better. More specifically, today’s medical systems are too reactive, when they could be more proactive.

As living standards improve across the world, ageing populations and the rising prevalence of non-communicable disease amplify the task of building health services fit for the future. I also spoke to the pioneering surgeon Ara Darzi while researching my book, Make, Think, Imagine, and he framed the challenge in stark terms: “The burden of disease is so big that we’re never going to be able to produce enough practitioners.”

Throughout my career I have been an active witness to the way engineering can reorient whole sectors, most notably energy and information technology. Now is the turn of healthcare, an area too often held back by traditional practices and conservative mindsets. Medical staff will need all the assistance they can get from robotics, artificial intelligence, efficient drug delivery pipelines and other maturing technologies.

This is a controversial view. Public opinion seems to be turning against technological solutions. Privacy concerns are hampering the sharing of medical data, Crispr gene-editing is reviving old fears of eugenics, and anti-vaccination sentiment is on the rise. Yet against this gloomy backdrop, I see three clear shifts in attitude and approach that must take place if engineering is to deliver on its great promise.

First, we must rekindle belief in progress. History shows it is engineers, rather than medics who have done most to save lives and extend them. Before they enter the clinic, every drug, vaccine, diagnostic tool and medical database must be engineered into a form that is safe, reliable and cost-effective.

Engineers today are developing extraordinary abilities to understand and intervene in human physiology. I recently visited Robert Langer’s lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he described a device smaller than a grain of rice that he can inject into a tumour to test the efficacy of dozens of chemotherapy agents in parallel. This is just one tool in a growing arsenal of innovative ways to deliver drugs with unprecedented precision.

The judicious application of data analytics and machine learning, meanwhile, heralds a revolution in preventive medicine. For example, the UK’s National Health Service, which recently piqued the rather unhealthy interest of US president Donald Trump, holds seven decades of health records for an entire population. I am determined to ensure the effort to combine this information with growing genome sequence databases becomes a national priority. Initiatives of this kind are best managed by public-private partnerships to distribute control and manage risk. Crucially, they must prove that nobody’s privacy will be violated.

The second effort should be on the part of regulatory agencies to do more to ease the passage of discoveries and inventions from lab to clinic — and onward into the marketplace. The delivery of a new drug, procedure or device now takes on average more than a decade, at vast expense.

Safety testing is critical — its failure led to the thalidomide disaster of the 1950s and ’60s — but this process can be accelerated by the removal of unnecessary red tape and a more intelligent approach to clinical trials. I take heart from the rapid and near-universal condemnation of the dangerous and unlawful experiments in gene-editing conducted on human embryos in China. Governance is not broken and regulatory regimes can keep up with technological change.

Finally, we need to recognise that great advances usually emerge from the gaps between existing sectors. This is core to the ethos of the Francis Crick Institute, a world-class biomedical research hub whose board I chair. The institute is designed to accelerate scientific discovery by encouraging fluid interactions between disciplines, but also by fostering closer links with clinicians, engineers, businesses and the wider public.

The same appetite for pursuing innovation without boundaries should be nurtured in schools and universities to help create a world in which people and ideas move and intermingle more freely than ever.

Get all this right and engineering will propel healthcare provision out of the Middle Ages and into a future in which medical staff have the transformative tools they sorely need. That way they can get on with the crucial work that engineered products will never be able to do: caring for people with genuine compassion.


The writer is a former chief executive of BP and the author of ‘Make, Think, Imagine: Engineering the Future of Civilisation’