shares of vertex pharmaceuticals inc vrtx inched 071 higher to 31420 tuesday on what proved to be an allaround poor trading session for the stock market with the sp 500 index spx falling 041 to 385610 and dow jones industrial average djia falling 024 to 3265320 vertex pharmaceuticals inc closed 228 short of its 52week high 31648 which the company reached on october 26th the stock outperformed some of its competitors tuesday as johnson  johnson jnj fell 051 to 17309 merck  co inc mrk fell 142 to 9976 and abbvie inc abbv rose 035 to 14691 trading volume 12 m remained 206869 below its 50day average volume of 14 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