Record Black Friday sales lifted the markets to a sharply higher open with the Dow leaping 305 points to 11,537. Nasdaq jumped 84 points to 2526.

On the upside

Carl Icahn offered a premium of approximately $1.73 billion to acquire Commercial Metals (NYSE: CMC).  

A Seeking Alpha article noted that Pacific Ethanol (Nasdaq: PEIX) founder and chairman William Jones purchased 200,000 shares of company stock earlier this month. 

Bargain hunters lifted shares of Cemex (NYSE: CX) whose stock price tumbled last week.

On the downside

The Independent Data Monitoring Committee for Celsion’s (Nasdaq: CLSN) Phase III HEAT Study recommended continuation of the study but the stock price dropped. 

G. Willi-Food International (Nasdaq: WILC) disappointed with sharply lower third quarter earnings due to lower prices. 

Shares of Focus Media (Nasdaq: FMCN) fell again after Muddy Waters accused the company last week of overstating the number of LCD screens in its advertising network.

In the broad market, advancing issues outpaced decliners by a margin of 13 to 1 on the NYSE and by nearly 8 to1 on Nasdaq. The Russell 2000 which tracks small cap stocks leaped 31 points to 697.