Time for your daily dose of Trending Tickers, the stocks that you're tracking as measured by Yahoo finance ticker searches.

Shire plc (SHPG) is getting whacked by more than 20%. The Irish based biopharmaceutical company is down on reports that AbbVie's (ABBV) board is considering backing out of it's $55 billion dollar deal to purchase Shire. A big part of the appeal for AbbVie was the so-called inversion tax savings that would have been created by relocating overseas. Now that the Irish government and U.S. are both cracking down on inversion moves the deal has lost considerable appeal. Shire says AbbVie should honor the proposal but other than the break-up fee there's little to stop AbbVie from walking.

Wal-Mart (WMT) shares slightly lower. The world's biggest retailer said earlier that it intends to slow its pace of store openings in the U.S. to focus on e-commerce. The Bentonville monsters will open 60-70 Super Center's next year, down from more than 115 this year. It's also slowing the growth rate of its Neighborhood Stores. Walmart is expected to pass Staples and become the number two e-commerce retailer in the U.S., though still a fraction of industry leader Amazon (AMZN).

Finally the VIX Index (^VIX)!  Volatility is getting its own shoutout today after spiking more than 16% to over 27.27 near the open on today's stock sell-off. The VIX, loosely though not exactly correctly considered a proxy for fear levels on Wall Street, has spiked more than 60% in the last five trading days. It's hitting 52-weeks highs but is still a long way from the peaks of 2012 and 2011 when readings over 40 weren't uncommon. Nothing wrong with a little panic now and again.

Those are your Trending Tickers today. Tell us what stocks you're watching on Twitter using the hashtag #TrendingTickers.

More from Yahoo Finance:

New case of Ebola in the U.S.: Is it the latest market headwind?

Two global energy giants likely to outperform index funds

Here's how to save America $250 billion: Rep. Tim Ryan