After a choppy start to the trading day, stocks finally managed to stage a notable rally during the afternoon. Last week, the Dow experienced its largest points drop in five years and the S&P 500 lost the most points in six years.

Verizon Wireless announced a deal to buy Rural Cellular (RCCC | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating). Meanwhile, Verizon Communications (VZ | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) reported Q2 net income rose 4.5%.

South Korea's Doosan Infracore agreed to buy a unit of Ingersoll-Rand (IR | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) for $4.9 billion (full story).

American Home Mortgage (AHM | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) shares were suspended after losing 42% in pre-market trading. On Friday, the company said that it will delay payments of its quarterly dividend. Business Wire reported "The disruption in the credit markets in the past few weeks has been unprecedented in the company’s experience and has caused major write-downs of its loan and security portfolios and consequently has caused significant margin calls with respect to its credit facilities."

Join TradingMarkets Director of Education, Steve Primo, as he teaches a number of quantitative strategies that can potentially give you an edge in your trading.

Sign up now for one of our free training classes and start learning how to become a better trader.

TradingMarkets subscribers have access to 16 quantitative stock indicators and another 17 quantitative market bias indicators. These indicators are derived from our proprietary database that includes millions of trades, and designed to give you a short-term trading edge.

Each day, we provide free open access to one of these proprietary stock indicators. If you would like to access all 16 stock indicators, 17 market bias indicators, along with many other tools, click here for a free 7-day TradingMarkets trial.