On The Fly: Top stock stories for Thursday

Stocks saw a quiet session a day after the week's biggest event, the Federal Reserve policy announcement, came and went mostly as expected. The Dow and S&P mostly drifted just below the flatline for most of the session before a late day dip pushed them to close near their worst levels. The Nasdaq, the laggard again today as has been the case in several recent sessions, closed with a loss of 0.5% to put it on pace for a weekly decline unless it rebounds tomorrow. ECONOMIC EVENTS: In the U.S., initial jobless claims fell 23,000 to 259,000 in the week ended September 16. The Philadelphia Fed business outlook survey rose to a robust 23.8 from 18.9 in August. The FHFA home price index for July rose 0.2%, versus the 0.4% increase that was expected. The leading index rose 0.4% to 128.8 in August following a 0.3% increase in the prior month. In Asia, Standard & Poor's downgraded China's sovereign rating to A+ from AA-, becoming the last of the three major rating agencies to do so. COMPANY NEWS: Equifax (EFX) remains in the headlines over its recent disclosure of a massive cybersecurity breach, with the latest coming from The Wall Street Journal, which reported that hackers entered the company's computer network69 in March of this year, more than four months before its security team uncovered them. Meanwhile, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton in a statement late Wednesday disclosed the agency itself was the victim of a hack in 2016... Following yesterday's report that Tesla (TSLA) is working with AMD (AMD) on self-driving Artificial Intelligence chips, several Wall Street analysts commented on the news. While some were bullish on the opportunity for AMD, others like Bank of America Merrill Lynch argued that Tesla's reported shift away from Nvidia (NVDA) has limited impact on either. Nvidia shares, though, ended the day almost 3% lower following the report... Google (GOOGL) announced a cooperation agreement that involves HTC receiving $1.1B after transferring certain R&D employees to Google's hardware team and a licensing agreement for HTC intellectual property. MAJOR MOVERS: Among the notable gainers was Calgon Carbon (CCC), which jumped 62% to $21.40 after agreeing to be acquired by Japan's Kuraray for $21.50 per share in a deal with an equity value of about $1.1B. Also higher was Impax (IPXL), which gained 10% after The Wall Street Journal reported that the company and Amneal Pharmaceuticals are in talks to combine to better compete in the generic drug market. Intercept Pharmaceuticals (ICPT) was among the noteworthy losers, dropping almost 25% after the FDA, in a new safety communication sent out today on the company's Ocaliva drug, said it identified 19 cases of death and warned of an increased risk of serious liver injury in certain patients. Also lower was Transocean (RIG), which fell 7% after announcing that a subsidiary of Chevron (CVX) elected to exercise its contractual option to terminate the drilling contract for an ultra-deepwater drillship. INDEXES: The Dow dropped 53.36, or 0.24%, to 22,359.23, the Nasdaq fell 33.35, or 0.52%, to 6,422.69, and the S&P 500 slid 7.64, or 0.3%, to 2,500.60.