Jarden Brief: Caesars has a seizure, stock plunges, but pharmaceuticals have big success

Hotel and casino entertainment company Caesars Entertainment had a shocker overnight. Photo / 123RF

Keeping you up to date with the latest market moves, in association with Investment firm Jarden

International

US

All major US indices were in the red at the time of writing. The S&P 500 fell 0.6 per cent, the Nasdaq dropped 1.3 per cent, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average slumped 0.1 per cent.

Sector performance was mixed with health care and energy on top, increasing 0.7 and 0.5 per cent respectively. Consumer discretionary and financials were the major laggards, falling 2.1 and 1.5 per cent respectively.

Year to date, energy has dominated all other sectors with the S&P 500 energy sector index up 38.5 per cent.

The next best performance came from utilities, only up 1.7 per cent year to date. In contrast, the communication services sector was the biggest underperformer this year, down over 36.0 per cent year to date.

Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly lead the S&P 500 with a 4.4 per cent rise in its share price. The company received upgrades from brokers overnight.

Merck & Co was close behind, up 3.7 per cent at the time of writing. This follows the company winning a high-stakes patent case against pharmaceutical company Viatris.

Home construction company Lennar Corp rounds out the top three performers, increasing 2.6 per cent to US$77.88 a share.

Caesars Entertainment experienced the largest decrease, down 10.0 per cent. Similarly, Factset Research Systems also underperformed, down 7.5 per cent. Factset reported earnings per share of US$3.13 while market estimates were placed at US$3.20.

Despite energy companies outperforming, energy technology company Enphase Energy was in the red, down 7.2 per cent at the time of writing.

Rest of the World

The key Asian markets all experienced losses. The Shanghai Composite, Nikkei and Hang Seng dropped 0.3, 0.6 and 1.6 per cent respectively.

Following global trends, all European markets were in the red. The CAC took the biggest hit, down 1.9 per cent. Following was the DAX and the FTSE, down 1.8 and 1.1 per cent respectively.

For the second month in a row, the Bank of England raised its rate 50 basis points to 2.25 per cent.

Commodities

WTI Crude Oil gained 0.4 per cent to US$83.27 a barrel. Natural gas on the other hand decreased 7.8 per cent to US$7.17 a cubic foot, the lowest price in over two months for the commodity.

Gold ticked up US$2.40 to US$1,678.2 an ounce.

Bitcoin and Ethereum continued their downward trend, falling 0.2 and 3.1 per cent respectively. Even though Bitcoin has fallen over 70 per cent from its all-time high, the cryptocurrency still has a market capitalisation of approximately US$367.0 billion.

If compared to global corporations, the cryptocurrency would place in the top fifteen companies by market capitalisation, ahead of companies such as Walmart, JPMorgan Chase and NVIDIA.

The US 10-Year Treasury Rate continued to rally with a further 19 basis point increase. This brings the rate to 3.7 per cent.

New Zealand

Pushpay CEO Molly Matthews. Pushpay was the NZX 50's top perfromer yesterday. Photo / Supplied

The NZX 50 rose 0.2 per cent to close at 11,518.32 points yesterday.

Donor management firm Pushpay Holdings was the top performer, up 2.7 per cent.
Fisher & Paykel Healthcare improved 1.5 per cent.

The a2 Milk Company also posted a gain. The dairy company closed 1.5 per cent higher.
Among the underperformers, courier company Freightways declined 5.1 per cent against the run of play.

Pacific Edge fell 4.0 per cent. The cancer diagnostics business released an update on its contract with Te Whatu Ora (Health New Zealand) – Southern for its Cxbladder genomic biomarker tests, which remained unsigned at the time of announcement.

Pacific Edge clarified that a business case for the agreement is currently underway, with the deal entering an approvals cycle process following this.

Transportation technology firm Eroad slipped 3.6 per cent.

Westpac McDermott Miller consumer confidence data revealed an increase of 8.9 points in September to 87.6 points. This result, while weak historically, represents an improvement over the poor markers posted earlier in 2022.

REINZ data indicates a continuation of New Zealand's rural property slowdown. Only 204 farms were sold in the three months to August, 38 per cent lower than the prior corresponding period. This was supported by a reduction in the All-Farm Price Index of 8.3 per cent.

Australia

The Australian market was closed on Thursday with a public holiday in recognition of the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

• For more information on the latest market moves, get in touch with Jarden.

All market pricing and announcements are sourced from Refinitiv, NZX and ASX.

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