Lower open as housing starts disappoint

March housing starts rose less than expected to weigh down the markets to a lower open with Dow losing 33 points to 18,079. Nasdaq lost 10 points to 5,000.

On the upside

The Food and Drug Administration granted Fast Track designation to MedicNova's (Nasdaq: MNOV) MN-001 to treat nonalcoholic steatohepatitis with fibrosis.

Rosetta Genomics (Nasdaq: ROSG) received a patent allowance for a method of identifying a tissue of origin of a cancer sample.

First quarter earnings fell for Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) due to the strong dollar but the results were better than expected and the video streaming service added more subscribers than anticipated.

On the downside

SanDisk (Nasdaq: SNDK) disappointed with lower first quarter earnings that missed analyst expectations as revenue fell prompting a downgrade.

Pernix Therapeutics (Nasdaq: PTX) commenced a private offering of $120 million in convertible senior notes.

Pacira (Nasdaq: PCRX) received a subpoena from the Justice Department for documents related to the marketing and promotion practices of Exparel.

In the broad market, declining issues outpaced advancers by a margin of more than 5 to 3 on the NYSE and by more than 10 to 9 on Nasdaq. The broader S&P 500 lost 4 points to 2101. Bitcoin added $5 to $225.