Novartis Buying Biotech

FT.com / Companies / Drugs & healthcare - Novartis to buy biotech firm for SFr900m

Novartis will pay more than SFr900m ($874m, €556m) for Speedel,
a small Swiss biotechnology group, to secure full control of a new
blood pressure drug – a potential blockbuster – and a pipeline of
associated products.
...
That would give Novartis a 61.4 per cent stake in Speedel, prompting a
mandatory public offer at the same price. The offer price is almost
double Speedel’s SFr64.10 closing price on Wednesday and an 80 per cent
premium to its volume-weighted average price over the past 60 days.

As financials continue to fail and broader sectors of the economy are weakening biotech and healthcare are seeing positive rotation of funds and some bargain hunting.

UPDATE: From Bespoke:

Percentage of Stocks Above 50-Day Moving Averages

Currently, just 14% of stocks in the S&P 500 are trading above their 50-day moving averages. While this is extremely oversold, the number got down to 8% last August and 11% in January.

Financials and Industrials are the sectors struggling the most. Each of them have just 2% of stocks trading above their 50-days. Consumer Discretionary isn't far behind at 5%, however. The two sectors that look the best at the moment are Health Care and Utilities. Health Care has 42% above their 50-days, while the Utilities sector sits at 39%.

Go to Bespoke to see the sector charts.