Stocks Digging Themselves Out of the Hole

Also, billionaire investor Carl Icahn has moved to replace 10 directors on Yahoo!'s (YHOO - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) board, telling chairman Roy Bostock in a letter that the company "acted irrationally and lost the faith of shareholders" in turning down Microsoft's (MSFT - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) sweetened takeout offer. Recently, reports surfaced that Icahn had begun acquiring large amounts of Yahoo! stock.

Earlier this month, Microsoft upped its bid for the Internet-portal operator by $5 billion in a last-ditch attempt to prod Yahoo! into agreement. But Yahoo! remained defiant, so Microsoft, which had first proposed the combination in February, finally dropped the offer. Yahoo! shares were fractionally better.

Elsewhere, Britain-based bank Barclays (BCS - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) lost 1.4% after reporting a $1.94 billion writedown and saying its first-quarter profit had withered from last year.

JC Penney (JCP - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) said its first-quarter income plunged by 50% from a year earlier, and the retailer predicted that 2008 will be a difficult year. Still, shares were up 2.5%.

Back on the data side, the U.S. Treasury said net foreign purchases of long-term securities totaled $80.4 billion, up from a downwardly revised $64.9 billion in the prior month.

Among commodities, crude oil was up $1.14 to $125.36 a barrel, and gold futures were adding $18.40 at $884.90 an ounce. The U.S. dollar slipped 0.2% against the euro at $1.5484 while yielding 0.6% to the yen at 104.68.

Treasury prices were erasing early losses. The 10-year note and the 30-year bond each rose 10/32 in price to yield 3.87% and 4.59%, respectively.

Markets abroad were mixed. In Asia, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 added 0.9% overnight, but the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong slipped 0.1%. As for European bourses, London's FTSE 100 climbed 0.6%. Germany's Xetra Dax and the Paris Cac, however, were each slightly lower.