Healthcare sector Update: Agilent Technologies (A), Avalanche Biotechnologies (AAVL), AbbVie (ABBV)

A healthy health care sector is giving the ailing — but healing — stock market a booster shot early in 2015.

While the broad Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index heads into Thursday’s trading session down 1.6% for the year, the health care sector — deemed as a “defensive” play in a turbulent market — is a bright light. It is the leading sector in the large-company stock, with a gain of 1.8% in the first four trading days of 2015. Of the 10 sectors, only three are sporting gains this year, with stocks in the consumer staples and utilities sectors in the black.

The big loser this year? It’s no surprise. The beleaguered energy sector, off 4.5%, which has been crushed by the continued plunge in crude prices that began last year. {1}

Below are the sector returns for the 10 major S&P 500 sectors.

Agilent Technologies (NYSE:A) closed gained 2.92% to $40.85, the market capitalization of the stock remained 13.43 billion. YTD trend of the stock was negative -1.21%. The company recently declared the following webcast for the investment community: 33rd Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference

·         Westin St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco, Calif.

·         Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015, at 10 a.m. PT

·         Mike McMullen, Agilent president and chief operating officer

Avalanche Biotechnologies Inc (NASDAQ:AAVL) a clinical-stage biotechnology organization focused on discovering and developing novel gene therapies to transform the lives of patients with sight-threatening ophthalmic diseases, recently declared the pricing of its public offering of 2,399,457 shares of its common stock at a public offering price of $59.00 per share, before underwriting discounts, commissions and estimated expenses. 2,009,457 of the shares of common stock are being offered by Avalanche and 390,000 of the shares are being offered by existing stockholders. In addition, the underwriters have been granted a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 359,918 shares of common stock from Avalanche. The stock, in the current trading session, was at $59.17, with the drop of -1.51%.  Tracking the three months and 6 months trends, the stock was at +89.03% and +111.72%, respectively.

AbbVie Inc. (NYSE:ABBV) enhanced 1.54% and its trading price was $67.97 recently. The volume of the stock was 4.53 million shares and the average volume remained 6.89 million shares. AbbVie Inc. (NYSE:ABBV) in cooperation with Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc. (NBIX), declared positive top-line results from the first of two ongoing Phase 3 clinical trials, designed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of elagolix in premenopausal women with endometriosis. Results from the trial show that after six months of treatment, both doses of elagolix (150 mg once daily and 200 mg twice daily) met the study's co-primary endpoints (p<0.001) of reducing scores of non-menstrual pelvic pain (NMPP) and menstrual pain (or dysmenorrhea), associated with endometriosis, at month three, as well as month six, as measured by the Daily Assessment of Endometriosis Pain scale.

source{1}:http://americasmarkets.usatoday.com/2015/01/08/health-care-sector-gives-market-booster-shot/