alexion pharmaceutical and also b biogen, losing a whole lot of ground.ly feels like the ibd has become the poster child for this momentum or no-momentum sell-off we've seen in the market. some are saying maybe it is even the new conviction which traditionally has been the fear gauge on wall street. >> i'm having a little trouble here with the birthday party. but, yeah, biotech obviously has been a dramatic and substantial outperformer. that's been led i think by a lot of innovation. i know we'll talk about hepatitis c and some of the groundbreaking new drugs that are reaching the market. i think that what we are seeing is a correction. obviously everyone is asking the question is it over. i think that certainly nothing goes up to the sky each and every day, but again i think we are seeing true innovation in the sector, maybe stocks got a little ahead of themselves but i think there's still going to be demand for these life changing therapies that we are seeing and the benefits that will throw to the companies involved. >> the sell-off is ridiculous in ce

here is ceo and founding partner of alexion partners. 6.7% is not that bad. what do you you make of these numbers? >> there are reasons for cautious optimism. for some american, times are still very tough and in peculiar that is for the long term unemployed. so for folks who have been out of a job for six months or a year, it's still very, very hard for them to find new opportunities. we are seeing some upticks in terms of hiring with recent 2k3wr grads and people who have been out of the workforce for less time than that. so there are reasons to be concerned and reasons to be cautiously optimistic. >> let's look at the optimism aspect of it. you're saying the good news, people who are graduating or even already working in the health field, they're doing well, construction and service area are seeing job growth? >> yes, all three of those are pockets of optimism. let's take them one at a time. because of all of the legislative changes regarding health care, there has been a lot of hiring in all facets of health care, both health care professionals an administ

. >>> accelerating losses today, names like alexion. great to have you here.names are you focusing on? >> i'm focusing on vertex bio n biogen. they've got a cystic fibrosis drug on the market and they're testing it with another cystic fibrosis drug. it could expand the population. and so that could potentially be a 4 billion combo drug u it could go up to 100 if their negative goes up to 40. this is a really big binary event. >> what are the terms in being favorable or not favorable. >> he's a little more neutral about it. >> you're looking at biojen. he this have two hemophilia drugs out there. are they a catalyst? >> they are, in addition to another drug. these are the big drivers in biodrugs. they've got a drug in alzheimer's, lupus. they say look to the earnings companies when you're in a tough spot like you are in biotech right now. >> vertex, that sounds like the perfect -- it's a trade event. >> i traded it yesterday. i did not trade it today. and i traded out of it yesterday. it made a very nice pop. >> how do you trade that if you have this probabilit

now among the individual loser in the s&p 500, check out vertex pharmaceuticals, alexion, biogen, all down 2% on the day. if you're looking for momentum, not just netflix and pandora. >> steve weiss, even on this program he said, i don't know where it's going to settle out. i still like them long term. i can't tell you where they're going to pull back too. >> momentum cuts back both ways. you have a number oom people to come in and try to bottom fish. murphy came in, for example, and made a very astute buy in gilead. the long-term big case on big cap biotech is still intact. >> scott, there's no support for the ibb until 200. that's a reasonable level where the index settles out. however, if you're a stock picker, i think the big ones get too cheap once the index gets there. and i agree with steve weiss, these are fabulous businesses. short term, though, this is a falling knife. >> no, look, i think from isi, he loves these stocks longer term. >>> another high profile executive leaving jpmorgan, commodities head blythe masters departing after 27 years and kate kelly has breaking news

midday swoon, but we simply can't have another slew of ipos without banging down the gileads and the alexionsabilize. a fast food casual restaurant chain exploded higher on the offering friday and 65% pop shows you the travesty of an ipo season can still hurt existing companies. i say unfortunately only because this deal like grub hub shows there's still plenty of investors who just buy the stocks of companies they like without any fundamental grounding or comparisons. far more representative were the two giant busted deals, l la quinta and ally financial, an $11 billion company that's a full dollar below its offering price. both failed to rally today. grubhub, no. zoe's, they're anomalies now. the other positive sign, i've been saying twitter has become the poster boy for the ipo pullback. for people who buy the first day, the ones who did it after a magnificent run have now round tripped and actually lost money. this morning the big gun owners of twitter, benchmark, announced they don't intend to sell stock any time soon. this is a very important development because unless we see more of th

netflix down 5%, alexion pharma. 50 google down as well as facebook. all of that pain in the equity markets meant gain for the bond markets. ten-year treasury yields, 6.4%. we got to a yield of 2.62, dropping 5% -- not 5%, five basis points rather since trade late on wednesday. elsewhere are the bond yields, ten-year bunds, down 1.53. ten-year gilt yield 2.631%. 101.32 is where we got during the session. euro/dollar last friday hit a low of 136.72. this morning we're trading just below 13. that's what's happened today. or what is happening today in europe. we had a big sell-off in japan. sri has the update on that for us out of singapore. sri? >> we did, ross. suffice to say, all the major indices were fairly deeply in the red in this region. japan was the rank underperformer, down by 2.4%. we're looking at six-month lows. more importantly for the week as a whole, we saw the sharpest decline of the nikkei since march 2011. so remember what happened back then. march 2011 was when we saw the triple disaster in japan, the earthquake and then the subsequen

alexion, clovis, gilead.ocks, price line, netflix, facebook, amazon, google, you name them, to the downside. another bad sign for the bulls here, ally financial. it is the biggest of the year, down 4.5% in its debut. also rite aid reporting a better than expected quarterly profit due to strong pharmacy sales. currently up 10%. then adp moving to session lows after opening higher on news the company is planning to spin off its dealer service business. moody's and standard and poor's governing counc downgraded the company on that bit of news. back over to you guys. >> for more on the spinoff and the downgrade which brings the universe of companies down by 25% that have a aaa rating. joined now by the chief financial officer of adp. >> also a member of cnbc's cfo counsel. i couldn't help but notice a little angst with the news of the downgrade. >> overall the news was well perceived. we know our investors appreciate the action and obviously in a tough day like this i think the stock has hold up relatively well.

riot police in turkey have fired water counting up thousands of protesters near the capital supreme alexion council the demonstrators want overview of local election results we saw president at a one sparsely win and narrow victory boxers believe there is a serious disparity between beneficial count and it's been reported. on the kenyan capital nairobi has been hit by explosions killing six people and injuring twenty five reports such as three bombs were thrown in a busy district targeting food stores and restaurants the somali minister and a group al shabaab is believed to be behind us sold our stocks started up to kenya sent several thousand troops to somalia to help the one bad government flight run. when a computer is why has run its course so it can turn from a mystery it's all so toxic threat up next it's documentary terror blind. the people of afghanistan head to the polls but they're like the color blind but little old people we. are democratic we're. going to be absolute. the worst school the tried to play play polo going to. fight for the thing every minute. lead the law oh well.

the carnage comes as the country prepares to vote of its first journey alexion since the twenty eleven pullout of u.s. troops in iraq is going through one way it's worst period of the sectarian violence more than nine hundred civilians have been killed this month alone making it to the deadliest april in six years and almost four thousand have died since january last year became the deadly is sensed a thousand and eight with over nine thousand people killed all in all since the beginning of the u.s. led invasion up to one hundred and thirty six thousand civilian deaths have been recorded and we spoke to aussies lose a calf in a shared her experience of covering local elections in iraq last year. we found a country that was incredibly divided for example even in baghdad neighborhoods that used to be next door now completely separated by sectarian divisions by biceps so i mean it and any massive changes of any any clear changes between then and a much worse escalation of violence and a much more situation because back then the people had to flee now the people have fled and we've seen an

among the big movers today, clovis, celgene, alexion, biogen, so the volatility continues in the biotech what are your thoughts as you see that yet again? >> i think they're somewhat vulnerable. the nasdaq has given back basically all of yesterday's gain, and that has a good degree of significance. i think the viewers want to watch if we break the nasdaq composite breaks 4,100. that may bring in some residual selling. certainly if we break 4,050, then i think you may get some anxiety selling, people saying, "wait a minute, this isn't working. this bounce has been a false bounce." now, i'll throw in a little bit of wall street folk lore, having done this 50 years, but traditionally it is assumed that the thursday before option expiration week has a higher rate of volatility than almost any other day. and probably 70% likelihood of being down. >> but you have cautioned before on what happens when biotech leads a sell-off. do you think there's any reason to believe there's anything more auspicious going on beyond just that folklore? >> the thing that's troubling to me is take a look at the