US shares were flat-to-lower at midsession on Thursday as concerns that Britons will vote in favour of quitting the European Union continued to send shockwaves while oil prices made a strident fall.
Despite the protests of the Federal Reserve’s Janet Yellen, as well as repeated warnings from the Bank of England today, the latest opinion poll bears out that voters are not listening to those protests.
Britain’s anti-EU ‘Leave’ campaign has increased its lead by seven points, rushing ahead of its rivals to 45%, according to a poll by Survation and IG on Thursday.
With just a week before the referendum, the Leave camp increased its lead from 38%, with Remain falling two points to 42%, in a phone survey from the company carried out on June 15.
It is the first time the Brexit camp has been in front since the polling began from Survation in February.
The S&P 500 bellwether was flat at 2,071, while the S&P Midcap 400 lost 0.4% to 1,474, and led by weakness in Sm Energy (NYSE:SM), down 9.4% to $26.73, in the wake of weaker oil prices.
Cyclical stocks took the biggest beating on the day, with the S&P 500 energy sector falling by more than 2%, and financials, industrials, materials, and technology all falling by more than 1%.
Oil prices came off sharply. The US benchmark West Texas Intermediate was down 3.5% at $46.34. A week ago oil was closing in on $52 a barrel.
The picture was gloomier still among small-cap stocks. The S&P Smallcap 600 lost 0.6% to 699, led by Korn Ferry International (NYSE:KFY), down 19.7% to $22.17 – a day after announcing strong Q4 earnings. The sell-off appears to be profit-taking.
Korn Ferry were the placement agents for Robert Cook who will become regulator FINRA chief later in 2016, as Proactive Investors reported on Monday. Read more.
But there was also some M&A chatter this session. Could Netsuite (NYSE:N) or Ultimate Software (NASDAQ:ULTI) be the next big tech takeover? That was the chatter among traders after a Proactive Investors report suggested the UK’s Sage PLC (LON:SGE), among others might be a suitor post-Microsoft/LinkedIn tie-up. Read more.
Netsuite shares were down 1.26% at $77.75, while Ultimate Software was up 0.5% at $206.04.