PAGE 8 , Wednesday, October 12, 2016 THE TRIBUNE
US stock indexes head sharply lower; oil falls By AP Business Writer
A batch of disappointing company earnings news helped put investors in a selling mood Tuesday, pulling U.S. stocks sharply lower. Health care companies led the broad market slide, which more than wiped out gains from the day before. Materials, utilities and technology stocks were among the big decliners. Energy stocks also closed lower as crude oil prices declined. Several companies, including Alcoa, reported quarterly results that fell short of Wall Street’s expectations. While investors will get to size up earnings from many more companies in coming weeks, the downbeat start to the third-quarter earnings season weighed on the market, said JJ Kinahan, chief strategist at TD Ameritrade. “It’s just a bad tone to get us started,” Kinahan said. “We’ve also been in a really low-volatility environment. This is the first day we’ve seen some heavier trade in a while.” The Dow Jones industrial
average fell 200.38 points, or 1.1 percent, to 18,128.66. Earlier, the average was down as much as 267 points. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index lost 26.93 points, or 1.2 percent, to 2,136.73. The Nasdaq composite index slid 81.89 points, or 1.5 percent, to 5,246.79. Indexes headed lower from the start of trading Tuesday and never got out of the red. Traders hammered shares in Alcoa and genetics research company Illumina after the companies reported results that fell short of financial analysts’ forecasts. Alcoa, which is due to split into two companies on Nov. 1, slid $3.60, or 11.4 percent, to $27.91. Illumina sank $45.86, or 24.8 percent, to $138.99. Fastenal also delivered quarterly results that failed to impress investors. The maker of industrial and construction fasteners fell $2.16, or 5.1 percent, to $39.96. Traders also sold shares in St. Jude Medical after the medical device maker warned that the lithium battery in some of its implanted heart devices may run out
the New York Stock Exchange. U.S. stock indexes moved lower in early trading yesterday, weighed down by a slide in materials and health care companies. Energy stocks also fell as the price of crude oil headed lower. The stock market was giving back some of its gain from the day before. Apple rose after rival Samsung discontinued its troubled Galaxy Note 7. (AP Photo) of energy prematurely. The stock lost $2.87, or 3.5 percent, to $78.41. Shares in Abbott Laboratories, which in April agreed to buy St. Jude for $25 billion, also fell. Abbott slid $2.34, or 5.4 per-
cent, to $41.16. Some companies benefited from others’ bad news. Apple was got a slight boost after rival Samsung announced it was discontinuing its Galaxy Note 7
phone permanently because of overheating handsets. The Galaxy Note 7 competed with Apple’s iPhone. Apple gained 25 cents to $116.30. Crude oil prices fell a day
after spiking to their highest level in a year, a move that disappointed some investors. “Many people thought crude would use its momentum to make a run at its recent highs and it completely faded,” Kinahan said. Benchmark U.S. crude oil lost 56 cents, or 1.1 percent, to close at $50.79 a barrel in New York. Brent, the international standard, slid 73 cents, or 1.4 percent, to close at $52.41 a barrel in London. In other energy trading, wholesale gasoline fell a penny to $1.48 a gallon. Heating oil slipped 2 cents to $1.59 a gallon. Natural gas shed 4 cents to $3.24 per 1,000 cubic feet. The major stock indexes in Europe also closed lower. Germany’s DAX fell 0.4 percent, while France’s CAC 40 slid 0.6 percent. Britain’s FTSE 100 slipped 0.4 percent. Markets in Asia were mixed. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 rose 1.0 percent, while Australia’s S&P/ ASX 200 added 0.1 percent. South Korea’s Kospi lost 1.2 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 1.4 percent.
Obama pushes US goal to send humans to Mars by 2030s WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama sought Tuesday to reinvigorate his six-year-old call for the U.S. to send humans to Mars by the 2030s, a mission NASA has been slowly and quietly trudging away at. The White House was calling attention to government contracts awarded to six companies to build prototypes for “habitats” that could sustain human life in deep space. One such privately developed habitat — an inflatable room —is already attached to the International Space Station. Obama also said that within two years, private companies like SpaceX and Boeing will taxi astronauts to the space station with NASA as a customer.
“These missions will teach us how humans can live far from Earth, something we’ll need for the long journey to Mars,” Obama wrote in an op-ed on CNN’s website . He said the ultimate goal is for humans eventually to stay on the red planet “for an extended time.” NASA officials and outside space experts said there is little new in what’s coming out of the White House on Mars, something NASA has taken to calling its “Journey To Mars .” “There’s nothing big here at all, unless you haven’t been paying attention,” said former George Washington University space policy chief John Logsdon. “It’s a re-focusing of the fact that he set these goals and NASA has
been pursuing them.” Alan Ladwig, a former top NASA official in the Obama and Clinton administrations, said he likes the intent, “but it’s a bit late in the term to shine a light on the humans to Mars exploration.” The president planned to discuss the initiative further when he meets with scientists, engineers and academics at an innovation summit Thursday in Pittsburgh. Obama first set a goal in 2010 to send humans to Mars by the 2030s, but the initiative has attracted little attention since then. Numerous Government Accountability Office reports have warned of the challenges in meeting that goal, most notable a lack of substantial
In this image provided by NASA shows NASA’S Journey to Mars. President Barack Obama sought yesterday, to reinvigorate his six-year-old call for the U.S. to send humans to Mars by the 2030s, a mission NASA has been slowly and quietly trudging away at. (NASA via AP) U.S. government funding Obama did not elaborate on what a Mars mission would cost or how the U.S. would pay for it. But he said it will require years of patience, testing and educa-
tion. “The question is why and how does this support U.S. national interests,” said Scott Pace, a NASA associate administrator during the George W. Bush administra-
tion and space policy chief at George Washington University. He said returning to the moon instead of going to Mars makes more sense for both commerce and international cooperation.