Stocks are rallying in early going on Monday morning, for the first time in three sessions.
Around 10:27 a.m. ET, the Dow was up 102 points, the S&P 500 was up 11 points, and the Nasdaq was up 36 - all less than 1%.
October turned out to be the best month for the market in four years, as the S&P 500 rebounded into positive territory for the year. The Dow is still down year-to-date.
This morning's data on the manufacturing sector were just a little better than expected. But with all the sector's recent troubles, and after it dropped to a two-year low in the third quarter, that's enough relief.
Markit's manufacturing PMI was 54.1, a six-month high. Lower commodity prices, especially metals, were a tailwind for producers.
ISM's PMI was 50.1, beating the forecast for 50, and managing to stay in expansionary territory (below 50 is contraction).
There will be much more data later this week, including the jobs report and auto sales. For everything you should be paying attention to, Business Insider's Sam Ro has you covered here.
Some 'merger Monday' mergers:
- Visa is buying Visa Europe in a deal that's valued at $23.24 billion. It would help the company better compete with MasterCard, according to Reuters.
- And, drugmaker Shire plans to buy DyaxCorp for about $5.9 billion for access to a late-stage experimental treatment for a severe breathing difficulty.
Goldman analysts downgraded Valeant Pharmaceuticals, and lowered their price target to $122 from $180. They said they were not confident that investors would buy the stock without clarity on a path forward.
Shares were up about 6% in early trading.
Meanwhile, Citron Research, the short-seller that trumpeted issues on Valeant's relationship with Philidor, released an updated report that said it was "looking forward to moving on to new stories."