Rising retail sales lifted shares of blue chip stocks with the Dow soaring 119 points to 12,968. Nasdaq lost 15 points to 2995.
On the upside
Shares of 3D Systems (NYSE: DDD) soared after rival Objet abandoned plans for an initial public offering and opted to merge with Stratasys (Nasdaq: SSYS).
Openwave Systems (Nasdaq: OPWV) will sell its service mediation and messaging products businesses to Marlin Equity Partners.
Canadian Solar (Nasdaq: CSIQ) denied reports that the company was being sold to China National Offshore Oil.
On the downside
E-Commerce China Dangdang's (NYSE: DANG) chief financial officer Conor Chia-Huang Yang resigned.
Bloomberg reported that Argentina will pursue a 51% interest in YPF (NYSE: YPF).
Cobalt International (NYSE: CIE) denied allegations of wrongdoing in Angola.
In the broad market, advancing issues outpaced decliners by a margin of nearly 2 to 1 on the NYSE and by 7 to 5 on Nasdaq. The Russell 2000 which tracks small cap stocks gained 6 points to 802.
