Stocks were lower today, and remained mostly on their lows all day long. The pressure was consistent and smooth to the downside which caused the Dow 30 to lose 194, the S&P 500 26, and the Nasdaq 100 to lose 81. Tomorrow the focus will be on the FOMC meeting minutes which are due out later in the afternoon.

Alcoa (AA  ) shares lost over 11% today after the aluminum manufacturer kick started earning season by posting a miss on both earnings and revenue for the third quarter. Sales fell 6.5% from a year ago due to lower aluminum pricing and changes to aerospace delivery schedules. The earnings announcement sent shares lower, but also closed on the lows of the session indicating a consistent selling pressure. Side Note: Alcoa is set to split into two publicly traded companies on November 1.

Twitter (TWTR  ) continues to be one of the dominant topics in a slow news cycle. Shares enjoyed a small bounce today (2.48%) as Reuters reported that Salesforce (CRM  ) is still considering a bid for the social media network despite resistance from shareholders. This contradicts the story from Bloomberg over the weekend that Salesforce was no longer interested in a deal. Twitter lost all of the pre-bidding rumor gains and now hovers in negative territory for the year.

Illumina (ILMN  ) were crushed today, losing a whopping 24.81%. The gene-sequencing company warned that "third quarter revenue would come in below guidance" and also gave a downgraded outlook for the current quarter. The company blamed a bigger-than-expected decline in sales of its sequencing instruments.

Apple (AAPL  ) shares closed flat today (0.26%) as the tech giant had its day with its Korean rival Samsung at the US Supreme Court. The subject of the argument is how much Samsung has to pay Apple for infringing upon Apple designs for 11 Samsung phones. The High Court will decide whether Samsung owes Apple all the profits it made from those 11 phones, or just the profits related to the design features that Samsung copied. If the Judge rules that they must only pay on the design features, that could save Samsung nearly $400 million.