Stock Market News Today: Dow Up 160 Points Midday

Your stock market news today: Equities are higher across the board this morning after Larry Summers withdrew his name from the candidates to replace Ben Bernanke as head of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Summers told President Barack Obama on Sunday that he believes his appointment would be too controversial.

The Dow is up 1% at 15,536, Nasdaq is up 0.3% at 3,732, and the S&P 500 is up 0.8% at 1,701.

Stocks are holding their gains even as new manufacturing data on the New York region reflects an unexpected decline in manufacturing activity there. Investors also received data on industrial production and capacity utilization in August this morning that revealed the biggest monthly gain in six months last month.

Among the major stock market news this morning, Packaging Corporation of America (NYSE: PKG) agreed to acquire Boise Inc. (NYSE: BZ) for $12.55 per share in cash, for an aggregate transaction value of $1.995 billion, inclusive of $714 million of outstanding indebtedness of Boise. The transaction is expected to close in Q4 2013 with committed debt financing.
The acquisition sent shares of Boise surging 26% this morning to a new 52-week high of $12.68.

Stock Market News Today: Huge Healthcare Moves

In other major stock market news today, Pluristem Therapeutics Inc. (Nasdaq: PSTI) is up 7% at $3.43 after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lifted the clinical hold previously placed on the company's U.S. phase II study on June 4. In its letter to Pluristem, the FDA indicated that Pluristem had satisfactorily addressed all the clinical hold issues and the company may proceed with the study.

Note: Our experts pick their favorite profit opportunities for the rest of 2013 - it's not too late to grab these gains.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE: TEVA) and Cancer Research Technology Ltd., Cancer Research UK's technology development arm, have signed a multi-project alliance agreement to research and develop cancer drugs that modulate DNA damage and repair response processes in cancer cells.

The alliance will allow the companies to span the entire drug discovery process. This starts at new target validation, which proves a protein's importance as a therapeutic target, all the way to lead optimization, which means synthesizing compounds for further development as potential drugs.

IPOs in the Stock Market News Today

Investors should also know about initial public offerings (IPOs) gearing up to come to market.