Stock Market Would Be Lost This Year Without Mergers (Yahoo Finance)

The majority of top performers in the S&P 500 (INDEX: .SPX) this year are as the result of a takeover, keeping a teetering stock market near the unchanged mark for 2010 in the face of fears of a global debt crisis, continued problems with the the U.S. consumer and higher interest rates. The most recent deal came over the weekend when life sciences instrument company Millipore (NYSE: MIL) was purchased by Germany's Merck KGaA for $107 in cash. Shares of Millipore, an S&P 500 Index member, are now up more than 45 percent this year.