The S&P 500 was sitting at an all-time high. Now, it’s experiencing its worst day in two years as the market reacts to the spread of coronavirus. Here’s Barron’s take on everything from oil prices to pharmaceutical stocks to the market as a whole.

If Bernie Sanders were to become president, it could be good for Roku Inc (NASDAQ: ROKU) and a problem for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and ...

Amazon Web Services fired back on why it is claiming bias by President Donald Trump in the Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative (JEDI) protest case in a redacted motion Friday, noting that those allegations meet the bar of credibility that would allow the Court of Federal Claims to examine the issue further. The crux of AWS’s case has been that the Trump helped steer the potential $10 billion cloud infrastructure contract to Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) based on an alleged animus toward Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. AWS is the cloud-computing subsidiary of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN).

A key court decision has investors in the internet security software company looking up.

There are always stocks, or industries or even sectors that lead and others that typically lag. Technical analysts do things like this too -- like finding which stocks are showing us superior relative strength.

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal by Apple Inc. as the iPhone maker seeks to avoid paying as much as $1 billion in patent damages to upstart software developer VirnetX Holding Corp.VirnetX, a Nevada company with less than $2 million in annual revenue, has waged a decade-long fight to collect royalties from Apple for secure communications technology used in FaceTime and virtual private network programs on devices including the iPhone, iPad and Mac computers.VirnetX jumped as much as 18% on the news.The high court denied Apple’s petition arguing that a $439 million judgment from the first of two cases brought by VirnetX was “grossly excessive” and should be thrown out because the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in separate proceedings, ruled that the patents at the heart of the dispute are invalid.A second case, not currently before the high court, resulted in a $503 million verdict over the same patents and newer Apple products. An appeals court has ordered a recalculation of damages in that case, although VirnetX has said it doesn’t expect the number to be significantly smaller.“It has always been our objective to create our own products with our proprietary technology,” VirnetX Chief Executive Officer Kendall Larsen said in a statement. “Unfortunately, when other companies are using your technology without permission, you must take action to protect that company asset. We have always believed that we were in the right with our court actions against Apple.”VirnetX said Apple’s Supreme Court appeal is part of that company’s effort to avoid paying to use another of VirnetX’s inventions. Cupertino, California-based Apple’s legal tactics were part of the reason the trial judge increased the jury’s verdict of $302 million, VirnetX’s lawyers said.“After 10 years of litigation, Apple has no plausible arguments for resisting the judgment,” VirnetX told the court. “It continues the pattern of ‘gamesmanship’ and delay that resulted in the district court enhancing damages below.”‘Loophole’ in RuleOn the question of damages, Apple said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which handles all patent appeals, has created a “gaping loophole” in the rule that damages should be “limited only to the value of its patented invention” and not to the price of an end product that contains other features.Apple said that in this case, VirnetX equated the rate paid for a desktop phone with the more complex iPhone.VirnetX said its expert witness estimated the “dollar value” of the invention in any phone supporting secure voice and video calls over the Internet. In that way, the company said it sought to avoid arguments that it was tying the royalty rate to the price of an iPhone or other Apple device.The Federal Circuit affirmed the jury verdict without issuing a formal opinion, and VirnetX argued that meant there was no real issue for the high court to review. The appeals court refused to put its decision on hold while Apple appealed to the Supreme Court.Apple also contends the case should be thrown out because of the decisions from the patent office. While the Federal Circuit has affirmed some invalidity rulings from a patent office review board, it ordered a second look at others.‘Massive Damages’“There is no need or justification to require a defendant to pay massive damages for infringing patent claims that the PTO has decided should never have issued in the first place,” Apple said.Apple is fighting to find a way to overturn the second case, which ended at trial with a $503 million verdict. The Federal Circuit in November ordered a new trial on damages in that case after finding that newer models of FaceTime didn’t infringe the patents. It said Apple was barred from arguing invalidity because that issue was resolved in one of the earlier court appeals.VirnetX said that none of its patents have been canceled because the legal dispute on those issues is continuing.The Patent Trial and Appeal Board, established in a 2011 law as part of a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. patent system, is a favored venue for companies to challenge patents after they’ve been sued. The board has a reputation for siding with companies that challenge patents, and Apple is the most prolific user of the system.Often, district court judges will put a civil suit on hold until the reviews are completed. When they don’t, as in these cases, it becomes a race for the parties to see which forum will finish first.The case is Apple Inc. v VirnetX Inc., 19-832.(Updates with VirnetX comment in sixth paragraph.)To contact the reporters on this story: Susan Decker in Washington at sdecker1@bloomberg.net;Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net, Laurie Asséo, Elizabeth WassermanFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett earned a reputation of avoiding technology stocks. On Monday, he told CNBC's Becky Quick that ...

* Health insurers fall after Bernie Sanders' Nevada victory (Updates to early afternoon)

Apple and other tech stocks fell ill on Monday amid reports that the China coronavirus outbreak was threatening to turn into a pandemic. Apple stock tumbled beneath a key support level.

The ranks of the world’s trillion-dollar market cap companies has fallen by two, as both Google-parent Alphabet and Amazon fell below the 13-digit valuation level.

After dropping 228 points on Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down another 1,000 or so as coronavirus fears grow.

(Bloomberg) -- The National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday will convene its second hearing on a fatal crash involving Tesla Inc.’s automated driver-assist technology even though the pioneering automaker hasn’t filed formal responses to recommendations stemming from the first one more than two years ago.The NTSB in 2017 recommended that automakers including Tesla make their driver-assist systems more resilient to misuse by inattentive drivers, and limit the operation of those systems to only the driving for which they were designed.Automakers -- including Volkswagen AG, Nissan Motor Corp., BMW AG -- have told NTSB how their systems ensured driver engagement, which agency deemed acceptable responses. Tesla has had no formal correspondence with NTSB officials responsible for monitoring how safety recommendations are implemented, NTSB spokesman Chris O’Neil said.“It’s not the norm,” O’Neil said. “Most recommendation recipients respond in the prescribed 90-day window.”Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment but has said it updated Autopilot in part to issue more frequent warnings to inattentive drivers.The role of Tesla’s automated driver-assist features known as Autopilot along with other factors including driver distraction and highway infrastructure will be examined at an NTSB meeting on Tuesday examining a March 2018 crash in Mountain View, California, that killed 38-year-old Apple Inc. engineer Walter Huang after his Tesla SUV slammed into a highway barrier while using Autopilot.The probe was marked by an unusually public display of tensions between the agency and Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk that peaked when the agency kicked Tesla off the probe after he released information about the crash despite prohibitions against such disclosures during an investigation.The hearing could hold lessons for the auto industry as automated driving features are becoming increasingly common on new vehicles. Several other automakers have also equipped their vehicles with technologies that can provide automated steering, accelerating and braking, and some have installed systems to ensure drivers pay attention. General Motors Co. and Subaru Corp. use infrared cameras to track head and eye movement, and Nissan last year said it would include a similar driver monitor in a system designed to offer hands-free driving on the highway.Tesla has said Autopilot makes drivers safer, pointing to internal data it releases quarterly that it says demonstrates that drivers crash less frequently while using it than while driving manually. The company stresses that drivers must remain attentive with their hands on the wheel while using Autopilot, which monitors by sensing steering wheel inputs by the driver.The company has said it has adjusted the the warnings drivers receive if their hands are off the wheel for too long, which federal investigators have faulted for being easy to sidestep.In 2017, the NTSB closed its first probe of a fatal crash linked to Autopilot by calling on companies to develop ways to better ensure drivers pay attention while using automated driving features that require human supervision. It also called on automakers to take steps to limit the use of automated driver-assist features to only the driving scenarios for which they’re designed.The recommendations stemmed from the agency’s probe of a 2016 crash in which former Navy SEAL Joshua Brown died after his Tesla Model S crashed into a commercial truck crossing the road in front of him on a Florida highway while using Autopilot. The agency cited an over-reliance on the car’s automation by Brown and a lack of built-in safeguards to prevent inattention as key factors that contributed crash.Last fall, the NTSB again cited inattention and Autopilot’s design in a January 2018 crash in which a Tesla driver rear-ended a parked fire truck on a freeway near Los Angeles. The agency said Autopilot’s design allowed the driver, who was uninjured in the crash, to stop paying attention to the road.After that crash, Tesla said it has updated Autopilot in part to issue more frequent warnings to inattentive drivers. The company has also been in regular contact with NTSB investigators and provided information about its systems to the agency, O’Neil said.“That doesn’t replace the need for formal responses to safety recommendations,” he said. “It’s a process designed to help us understand what they’re doing to implement those safety recommendations and what their progress toward them are, which may inform whether we feel other recommendations are necessary.”Records from the Mountain View investigation hint at several factors the NTSB could highlight during the meeting Tuesday. With Autopilot engaged and set to cruise at 75 miles per hour, Huang’s 2017 Tesla Model X sped up and slammed into a concrete barrier. Vehicle data showed neither the driver nor the vehicle’s automatic systems applied the brakes prior to impact, the NTSB has said.Huang had complained that Autopilot had repeatedly veered his vehicle toward the same spot during earlier trips on that same stretch of highway, according to the agency. Data taken from his Tesla’s computer confirmed that the situation had occurred at the same location four days before the fatal crash and once more several weeks earlier, records released by the NTSB show.The tip of the concrete lane divider struck by Huang’s Tesla was supposed to have been protected by a crash attenuator, a device attached to highway infrastructure to absorb impact forces like a car’s crumple zone. It was damaged 11 days earlier and hadn’t been repaired by the California Department of Transportation before Huang’s crash.Records reviewed by NTSB found Huang was playing a game on his Apple-provided mobile device before the collision, the agency said, citing data transmission records. However, the data couldn’t show how engaged he was with the game or whether he was holding the device with both hands at the time of the crash, the NTSB said.Crash investigators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have opened 14 inquiries into Tesla crashes believed to involve Autopilot, plus 11 more involving other manufacturers with partial-automation systems.\--With assistance from Alan Levin.To contact the reporter on this story: Ryan Beene in Washington at rbeene@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth WassermanFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

The new coronavirus that was first identified late last year in Wuhan, China, is becoming a dominant theme in the earnings releases and conference calls of S&P 500 companies as investors press for answers on how it will impact their business.

SmarTrend identified an Uptrend for Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) on September 5th, 2019 at $139.57. In approximately 6 months, Microsoft Corp has returned 23.73% as of today's recent price of...

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear Apple's appeal of a federal court verdict in a years-long patent dispute, leaving the iPhone maker liable for $439.7 million in damages and penalties.

Investors are bracing for the negative impact of the coronavirus on the tech giant's business.

Amid a 10-year-plus bull market, many investors can’t come to terms with the idea that there could be a substantial decline in the stock market.

The chances have risen that the Federal Reserve will be forced to respond to growth concerns from the rapid spread of the coronavirus, economists said Monday.

Amphenol, a maker of electronic parts, warned it wouldn’t meet previous forecasts for sales and adjusted EPS a week after client Apple made a similar announcement.

(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc.’s supply chain, which is heavily reliant on China, will probably take more than a month to get back to full capacity at the earliest amid disruptions caused by the coronavirus, according to Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives.Even in a best-case scenario, the iPhone maker’s supply chain won’t be fully functional until early April as workers at Apple’s manufacturing partners return to work in China, Ives wrote in a research note. The disruptions could last until as late as June in a worst case scenario that would probably delay Apple’s fall iPhone release by months, he said.“All the Street’s focus is on the supply chain and gauging when some form of normalization begins around iPhone production throughout China,” Ives wrote in a research note.Last week, Apple warned it wouldn’t achieve its revenue forecast for the current quarter due to work slowdowns and sagging demand for its products in China, where the virus has infected more than 70,000 people. Reports of new clusters of cases in Italy and Iran sent stocks around the world tumbling on Monday. Cupertino, California-based Apple fell as much as 7.6% before paring some of the losses, while semiconductor stocks dropped 5.4%.If Apple’s supply chain gets back to normal by April, the company’s lower priced iPhone may be delayed by several weeks in the spring, but the 5G iPhone release in the fall would probably be unaffected, said Ives, who has an outperform rating on the stock. If slower production lasts until June, both iPhone release dates could be pushed out by months, he said.Ives’s base case calls for full production resuming by late April or early May, which would delay the fall iPhones by a few weeks and the lower cost devices by about two months.To contact the reporter on this story: Jeran Wittenstein in San Francisco at jwittenstei1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Catherine Larkin at clarkin4@bloomberg.net, Richard RichtmyerFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

The fundamental question facing (AAPL) (AAPL) investors this morning is whether the supply-chain issues from the coronavirus crisis is going to cause any lasting damage to the company’s business. Apple shares are down more than 4% in this morning’s broad virus-triggered market rout — and the stock is now down about 7% since it warned last week that March quarter revenue will fall short of previous guidance as a result of both supply-chain and demand issues tied to the virus. Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani wrote in a research note over the weekend that while he was chopping his March quarter revenue estimate by $8.6 billion, to $57 billion, to reflect Apple’s warning, he believes that revenue is shifting out, rather disappearing entirely.

Investing in Nike's IPO rather than Apple's IPO just 10 days later has proven to be the better move.

(Bloomberg) -- European equities haven’t had such a bad day since the aftermath of the Brexit vote more than three years ago as increasing concerns over the economic impact of the coronavirus hurt travel and luxury sectors, and volatility spiked.The Stoxx Europe 600 Index closed down 3.8% after falling as much as 4.2% in the sharpest drop since June 27, 2016, led by the travel, mining and auto sectors. Today’s move also wiped out the year-to-date gains for the Stoxx 600. The Euro Stoxx 50 Volatility Index surged as much as 49%, the most since the so-called “Volmageddon” of February 2018 -- when Wall Street was rocked by a surge in volatility and a sell-off in stocks.Luxury companies tumbled on fears that the epidemic will hurt sales, with LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE losing 4.7% and Roche Holding AG dropping 3.2%. The Stoxx 600 Travel and Leisure Index fell 6%, with Air France-KLM declining 8.7%, EasyJet Plc tumbling 17% and Ryanair Holdings Plc losing 14%.“We believe the coronavirus illness will substantially curtail store traffic in China and neighboring countries, may negatively affect incoming Chinese tourism, and is also likely to disrupt supply chains,” Oliver Chen, a retail analyst at Cowen & Co., wrote in a report on Monday.Money managers are selling stocks and looking for havens after South Korea saw a surge in cases to 763 and the concern about a jump in illnesses in Italy intensified. European equities advanced to a fresh record high last week, which is adding to investor anxiety about possibly stretched positioning and valuations.“Markets are in a risk-off mode amid concerns about the global spread of coronavirus, with a growing number of infections outside of China,” said Ulrich Urbahn, head of multi-asset strategy and research at Joh Berenberg Gossler & Co., which recently cut its exposure to commodities and favors quality European stocks. “Given the strong performance and elevated positioning in equities, the risks are clearly skewed to the downside.”The impact from China’s slowdown due to the coronavirus as well as supply, sales and production disruptions at major firms such as Apple Inc., are a major concern for asset managers. European equities are particularly sensitive as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. says the exposure of the Euro Stoxx 50 Index to China is about twice that of the S&P 500 due to such sectors as banks, automakers and luxury shares.Italy’s FTSE MIB Index led the declines among major European benchmarks, retreating as much as 6.1%, the most since June 2016, after Europe’s biggest surge of the coronavirus prompted the government to impose a lockdown on an area of 50,000 people near Milan, and authorities canceled the remaining days of the Venice Carnival, while universities closed. Some of the biggest Italian companies -- from banks to luxury firms -- were battered. Salvatore Ferragamo SpA declined as much as 10% and Juventus Football Club SpA lost as much as 12%.Goldman’s chief global equity strategist Peter Oppenheimer said last week that a 1% drop in global sales-weighted gross domestic product would cut European earnings by about 10%, turning them negative.The U.S. stock market extended the global slump, with the S&P 500 falling as much as 3.2% and the Nasdaq 100 losing up to 4.4%.However, continuous monetary easing by major global central banks and China’s efforts to support its economy are making some investors optimistic that the sell-off in risk assets won’t last for long. The London-based wealth manager Kingswood is currently neutral on stocks and looking to increase equity positions in case of a significant market correction.“The disruption caused by the virus will hit economic activity significantly in the first quarter, with global growth very likely to grind to a halt,” said Rupert Thompson, chief investment officer at Kingswood, which has about 2.5 billion pounds ($3.2 billion) under management. “But we continue to believe that the outbreak is likely to follow the path of previous such health scares with growth rebounding in the second and third quarters.”To contact the reporter on this story: Ksenia Galouchko in London at kgalouchko1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Blaise Robinson at brobinson58@bloomberg.net, Jon Menon, Paul JarvisFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.