Small-Cap Stocks Outperform on Centex and United Western Sales

Stocks are navigating choppy trading Wednesday after the Federal Reserve’s recent meeting meetings showed that officials saw that the economy was deteriorating.

At 2:18 pm ET, the Russell 2000 (NYSE:IWM) is up 5.73, or 1.33%, at 437.43, while the Dow is up 0.23% and the S&P 500 is up 0.59%.

Pulte Homes Inc. announced today that it has agreed to buy rival small-cap Centex Corp. (NYSE:CTX) for $1.3 billion in a stock deal that will create the nation's largest homebuilding company. Centex shares are currently up almost 20%.

Other small caps climbing today include United Western Bancorp (Nasdaq:UWBK), up 42% on news it will sell certain assets of its Sterling unit.

******It doesn’t happen often. Earnings season usually kicks off with either some bullish enthusiasm or bearish pessimism. But Tuesday afternoon, Alcoa (NYSE:AA) gave analysts exactly what they were looking for: nothing more, nothing less.

Alcoa lost money in the first quarter. A lot of it, really. $497 million. A year ago it earned $303 million.

But that loss was, apparently, perfectly priced into the stock. And so . . .

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