On The Fly: Top stock stories at midday

Stocks opened sharply higher, as they did yesterday, though they pared their opening gains again as well. Today's action was different, though, in that stocks bounced off their session lows and have drifted back to now top their opening highs. Oil prices have also reversed and are now higher and approaching $64 a barrel. Bitcoin prices continue their slide, falling another 16% on top of yesterday's rout. The cryptocurrency is now trading below $10,000, more than 50% under the high above $20,000 per coin that was reached just weeks ago. ECONOMIC EVENTS: In the U.S., industrial production jumped 0.9% last month, with capacity at 77.9%, which was better than the 0.2% growth forecast for December. The NAHB homebuilder sentiment index fell 2 points to 72 in January after jumping to 74 in December. COMPANY NEWS: Shares of Juno Therapeutics (JUNO) have surged in value, jumping about 50% to over $67 per share after the Wall Street Journal reported that the company is in talks to be acquired by Celgene (CELG). Several Wall Street analysts commented on the news, with Leerink's Michael Schmidt saying a deal could make potential strategic and operational sense and his peer at Citi arguing that Juno could be worth $110 per share in a takeover. Wedbush analyst David Nierengarten, however, downgraded Juno to Neutral from Outperform while raising his price target for the shares to $70 from $64, arguing that a takeout is possible, but it is "hard to chase" the shares above current levels. Several other companies involved in the development of chimeric antigen receptor T cell, or CAR-T, therapies are also rising following the report, including bluebird bio (BLUE), Bellicum Pharmaceuticals (BLCM) and Cellectis SA (CLLS)... Banks continued their earnings reporting, with Bank of America (BAC) and Goldman Sachs (GS) the latest big names to post their results this morning. Excluding the impact of tax legislation, both reported earnings that topped consensus forecasts. However, near noon, BofA shares were fractionally lower and Goldman shares slid 2%. MAJOR MOVERS: Among the notable gainers was Goodyear Tire (GT), which gained 3% after the company commented on its preliminary fourth quarter volume, stating that it exceeded its volume expectation with total company growth of 2%. Also higher was Pure Storage (PSTG), which rose 10% after the stock was upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Barclays. Among the noteworthy losers was Ford (F), which dropped 7% after announcing preliminary 2018 guidance that was worse than expected. Also lower were shares of Fastenal (FAST), which fell 7% after the company's fourth quarter earnings report. INDEXES: Near midday, the Dow was up 197.52, or 0.77%, to 25,990.38, the Nasdaq was up 37.33, or 0.52%, to 7,261.02, and the S&P 500 was up 14.72, or 0.53%, to 2,791.14.