Home prices climbed in July to lift the markets to a higher open with the Dow soaring 112 points to 16,113. Nasdaq surged 48 points to 4,592.

On the upside

Ceres (Nasdaq: CERE) licensed its Persephone bioinformatics technology to KWS SAST SE.

Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) will spin off its holdings in Alibaba (NYSE: BABA).

Shares of Republic Airways Holdings (Nasdaq: RJET) continued rising.

On the downside

Esperion Therapeutics (Nasdaq: ESPR) updated its Phase 3 strategy for ETC-1002 in response to the Food and Drug Administration’s End-of-Phase 2 Meeting Minutes.

OvaScience (Nasdaq: OVAS) does not expect to meet its 2015 goal of 1,000 AUGMENT treatment cycles.

Sequenom (Nasdaq: SQNM) hosted an investor and analyst day presentation yesterday.

In the broad market, advancing issues outpaced decliners by a margin of more than 5 to 4 on the NYSE while decliners barely edged out advancers by a slim margin on Nasdaq. The broader S&P 500 climbed 17 points to 1,898. Bitcoin held steady at $236.