Earnings and big pharma deals drive stocks up

Stocks ended the day in the green. The Dow (^DJI) was up 0.40% The Nasdaq (^IXIC) up 0.97% and the S&P 500 (^GSPC) up 0.41%. Investors had a lot of news to digest with upbeat earnings reports from Netflix (NFLX), Comcast (CMCSA) and Harley-Davidson (HOG), a miss from McDonald’s (MCD) and a flurry of pharmaceutical deals.

There were big moves between Novartis (NVS), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Eli Lilly (LLY) with the firms announcing several multi-billion dollar deals between them. Meanwhile, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management and Valeant Pharmaceuticals (VRX) announced a bid for Allergan (AGN), the maker of Botox. Shares of Valeant were up 6.87% and shares of Allergan were up 15.25%.

Related: Big pharma deals signal next phase of growth

After the closing bell today, watch for earnings from another pharmaceutical giant, Amgen (AMGN). AT&T (T) and Yum Brands (YUM) will also report after the close.

In other corporate news, General Motors (GM) said it will break up its engineering department in an effort to bring more accountability in the midst of investigations into faulty ignition switches linked to 13 deaths. The GM engineering department will now consist of two separate departments: global product integrity and global vehicle components and subsystems.

On the economic front, existing home sales for March fell 0.2%, less than the 0.7% decline economists were expecting. Sales are down 7.5% from a year ago. The March report is the latest sign the housing market is still struggling, but at least appears to be stabilizing.

And the Richmond Federal Reserve reported that manufacturing activity rebounded in April after contracting in February and March. The Richmond Fed’s manufacturing survey covers businesses in and around Virginia, Washington, D.C., Maryland, North Carolina and South Carolina.