shares of vertex pharmaceuticals inc vrtx slumped 023 to 29454 monday on what proved to be an allaround poor trading session for the stock market with the sp 500 index spx falling 075 to 361239 and dow jones industrial average djia falling 032 to 2920288 this was the stocks third consecutive day of losses vertex pharmaceuticals inc closed 1141 short of its 52week high 30595 which the company reached on august 15th the stock demonstrated a mixed performance when compared to some of its competitors monday as johnson  johnson jnj rose 013 to 16041 merck  co inc mrk rose 329 to 9048 and abbvie inc abbv fell 032 to 13831 trading volume 835024 remained 509705 below its 50day average volume of 13 m editors note this story was autogenerated by automated insights an automation technology provider using data from dow jones and factset see our market data terms of use