The Dow Lost 4 Points, Nasdaq Loses 22

The Dow lost 4.25 points today to close at 12,441.27, the Nasdaq fell 21.63 points to close at 2,435.57,
and the S&P 500 lost 4.61 points to close at 1,422.48. The markets moved higher in early trading as 'Merger Monday' reaffirmed its name. However, investors decided to take profits and the markets sold off slightly in the afternoon. Some of today's key deals include Express Scripts (Nasdaq: ESRX) offering to buy rival Caremark RX (NYSE: CMX), Apllo Group acquiring Realogy (NYSE: H) for approx. $6.6 billion and ElkCorp (NYSE: ELK) entering into an agreement to be acquired and taken private by The Carlyle Group.

Volume was light with 2.63 billion shares trading on the NYSE and 1.96 billion trading on the Nasdaq.
Decliners topped Advancers by a margin of 21:11 on the NYSE and 21:10 on the Nasdaq.

In individual stories, Realogy Corporation (NYSE: H) added 19.2% after the Company entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by an affiliate of private equity firm Apollo Management, L.P., in a transaction valued at approximately $9.0 billion, including debt. Realogy stockholders would receive $30.00 per share in cash at closing. Mikron Infrared (NASDAQ: MIKR) lost 29.25% after reporting Q4 EPS of $0.16 compared to $0.13 for the same period last year. Revenues were $8.88 million compared to $8.0 million for the same period last year.

Tomorrow, investors will be looking for earnings from Cintas (Nasdaq: CTAS), Circuit City (NYSE: CC), Darden Restaurants (NYSE: DRI), Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), Palm (Nasdaq: PALM) and Scholastic Corp (Nasdaq: SCHL). Also, look for economic data on PPI and Core PPI, November Housing Starts and Building Permits (8:30AM EST).

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