Better Than Expected Retail Sales Lifts Markets

On the upside

Spherix (Nasdaq: SPEX) reported upbeat preliminary data from a late stage clinical trial of its oral diabetes treatment Naturlose.

GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) partnered with Nabi Biopharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: NABI) to develop Nabi's nicotine vaccine NicVAX to help smokers quit.

Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) paid down $1 billion worth of debt after Standard & Poor's warned that the company's credit rating may be cut. Separately, Credit Suisse analyst Jonathan Chaplin upgraded the wireless carrier.

On the downside

The Food and Drug Administration may not approve Neuromed Pharmaceuticals' pain medication Exalgo sending shares of CombinatoRx (Nasdaq: CRXX) plummeting. CombinatoRx and Neuromed are merging.

Law firm Stull, Stull & Brody is investigating possible violations of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 by the fiduciaries the 401(k) plans of MBIA (NYSE: MBI).

EntreMed (Nasdaq: ENMD) reversed year ago losses to post a modest profit as the company cut costs but the stock price fell.

In the broad market, advancing issues outpaced decliners by a margin of nearly 5 to 1 on the NYSE and by nearly 7 to 2 on Nasdaq. The Russell 2000 which tracks small cap stocks leaped 16 points to 602.