The markets continued advancing during the midday with the Dow jumping 163 points to 15,539 as investors welcomed the withdrawal of Larry Summers from the Federal Reserve chair nomination. Nasdaq rose 11 points to 3733.
On the upside
Wedbush Securities analyst Liana Moussatos wrote that use of Omeros' (Nasdaq: OMER) OMS302 drug for ophthalmological procedures may be double previous estimates and lifted the price target for Omeros from $18 to $28.
Bargain hunters snapped up shares of McEwen Mining (NYSE: MUX).
Allegheny Technologies (NYSE: ATI) will sell its tungsten materials unit to Kennametal for approximately $605 million.
On the downside
Oppenheimer downgraded EZchip Semiconductor (Nasdaq: EZCH) from Outperform to Perform while Maxim cut its price target on the company from $38 to $29.
ExOne (Nasdaq: XONE) closed its public offering of 2.656 million shares of common stock.
NeoStem (Nasdaq: NBS) licensed three families of patents from the University of California, San Francisco.
In the broad market, advancing issues outpaced decliners by a margin of more than 4 to 1 on the NYSE and by nearly 2 to 1 on Nasdaq. The broader S&P 500 climbed 15 points to 1703.
