Investors brushed aside a report indicating lower than expected manufacturing activity to lift the markets higher during the midday with the Dow soaring 152 points to 8928. Nasdaq surged 33 points to 1610.
On the upside
AmTech Research upgraded Seagate Technology (Nasdaq: STX).Although online sales fell during the holiday shopping season, visitors to Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) increased 7%.
Bargain hunters lifted shares of flash memory card maker SanDisk (Nasdaq: SNDK).
On the downside
Several class action lawsuits were filed against Emcore (Nasdaq: EMKR) for issuing false statements that artificially lifted the stock price.
The New York Stock Exchange notified KKR Financial Holdings (NYSE: KFN) that the fund fell below NYSE listing standards and has six months to raise it share price to an average closing of $1 per share for thirty consecutive trading days.
After Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) completed its acquisition of Merrill Lynch, its assets increased to $2.7 trillion, more than JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) and Citigroup (NYSE: C).
In the broad market, advancing issues outpaced decliners by a margin of nearly 4 to 1 on the NYSE and by more than 2 to 1 on Nasdaq. The Russell 2000 which tracks small cap stocks rose 5 points to 504.