Big Rally Today, Citi and XEROX Benefit

The Bulls were on fire today, the Dow Jones finished up 124 points and Citigroup (NYSE:C) and XEROX (NYSE:XRX) were the volume leaders on the NYSE.

Stocks were back in favor following deals involving several high-profile companies, including Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and Xerox (XRX).  Thanks to a pickup in the pace of mergers and acquisitions investors poured money into possible acquisition targets.  This belief pushed up stocks right at the open, with the rest of a light-volume session being driven by investors wanting to put money back in the stock market after last week's decline.

Notably, the Dow is fewer than 250 points away from the psychologically significant 10,000 level after a six-month rally.

On the deals front, Johnson & Johnson shares rose 1.2% after it said it bought 18.1% of Crucell for $442.7 million. Crucell shares sank 6.3%. Xerox dropped 15% after it agreed to pay $6.4 billion for outsourcing and information-services company Affiliated Computer Services. ACS surged 14%.

Today's volume winners finshed as shown:

Symbol	Name	Last Trade	Change	Volume
C	CITIGROUP INC	4.57 4:00PM ET	0.19 (4.34%)	307,475,007
XRX	XEROX CP	7.68 4:00PM ET	1.29 (14.38%)	142,392,852
BAC	BK OF AMERICA CP	17.22 4:00PM ET	0.62 (3.73%)	125,048,934

Deals are back on Wall Street: