Despite a cautious report from home builders and despite a low volume day, today marked a clear win for the S&P 5000 and for the DJIA. The S&P broke through 1,100 and the DJIA broke through 11,000. We also had two mergers this morning, and while small they are signs that companies are willing to merge once more.

Here were today's closing bell levels:

Dow 10,090.76 +94.85 (0.95%)
S&P 500 1,097.52 +9.84 (0.90%)
Nasdaq 2,175.83 +19.03 (0.88%)

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In an interview with CNBC on Friday, investment legend Carl Icahn referred to the stock market as "schizophrenic" and said that the market is on a "precipice" and "really could go either way."

"If you get a double-dip recession and they start coming down, it's going to be a bit of a bloodbath," he said. "The amateur investor is going to get hit badly again because they're pouring money into these funds. Some of these funds managers I do not think are experienced enough to handle some of the distressed stuff they're buying and they're going to get burned."

When Carl Icahn announced the debut of his blog, The Icahn Report, there was great excitement. Finally, someone with decades of experience was going to expose the incompetence and bureaucratic self-enrichment that ensues at board meetings at most public companies in America.

It got off to a good start with a few interesting posts -- but there's been nothing since April 23rd, and even that was just a reprint of a piece Mr. Icahn did for the Huffington Post. Before that there were a few other reprints and guest posts. The last true Icahn Report exclusive piece by the man himself came on December 17th of last year.

Carl Icahn's battle for shareholder value at Lion's Gate Entertainment (NYSE: LGF) is heating up. After announcing that he had doubled his stake in the company to 9.2% back in October, the super-investor has again increased his position to 14.28%. Since Icahn began investing in Lion's Gate more than two years ago, the share price has plunged and the bellicose mogul is giving indications that he may have had enough with massive losses from film flops like The Spirit and Transporter III

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According to Boxofficemojo, Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail came out on top over the weekend at domestic theaters. As of early estimates, the film brought in over $40 million, proving that Tyler Perry's name can still sell tickets. This is great news for Lions Gate Entertainment (NYSE: LGF), which was looking to score a big hit after experiencing some weak performances at the box office.

Tyler Perry beat out News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) successful thriller Taken, which landed in the second spot. Coming in third was Coraline from General Electric Company's (NYSE: GE) Focus Features, although those two films could change positions once final numbers are in. Both of them scored around the $11 million mark. Time Warner Inc's (NYSE: TWX) He's Just Not That Into You was fourth and News Corp.'s Slumdog Millionaire, the toast of the Oscars telecast last night, was fifth. Both of those features scored similar amounts, about $8 million each, so we'll see what happens with their respective rankings. Poor Jason Voorhees. Last week, his movie, Friday the 13th, killed at the box office. This week, the slasher dropped 80% in terms of gross and landed in sixth place after debuting in the top slot. Talk about a bloody decline for Time Warner. Horror movies do tend to go down fast after the opening weekend, but I thought this particular feature might exhibit more strength.

Carl Icahn has been making the round doing everything short of stripping naked on CNBC to get his message across: Corporate governance in America is a complete joke and a major contributor to the mess we're in now. Shareholders and lawmakers need to get on the ball and do something about it.

In an op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal, Icahn writes that government bailouts have essentially plowed hundreds of billions of dollars into poorly-managed companies that still have same poor governance structures and lazy and incompetent managements and directors.

What can Congress and President Obama do? Icahn writes that "First, Congress needs to pass legislation giving shareholders enhanced rights to elect new boards, submit resolutions for stockholder votes, and have far more input on executive compensation and other issues. As companion to these reforms, Congress needs to pass legislation that prevents managers from making it more difficult for shareholders to exercise their ownership rights."

Icahn has been complaining about corporate governance in America for literally decades. He was lionized as an opportunist and corporate raider but the events of the past few months are proving that he was on to something.

Here's an idea: President Obama should create a cabinet level position of corporate governance that can work with all branches of government to improve shareholder right and management accountability. And the first Secretary of Corporate Governance should be none other than Mr. Icahn.

In a move that comes as somewhat of a surprise, Carl Icahn spent the first three days of this week spending $67 million on shares of Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO). He bought 6.8 million shares for an average of $9.92 bringing his total stake to 75.6 million million shares -- roughly 5.5%of the company.

Given that Icahn's nemesis, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is on the way out, Icahn may be positioning himself to have considerable say in the company's choice of successor. Icahn controls three seats on the company's board of directors.

The market value of the company has taken a beating since Icahn got involved. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) had offered to acquire the company for $33 per share. Yang spurned that offer and it was withdrawn in May. The stock now sits right around the $10 mark.

Icahn's decision to up his stake in the company signals some level of long-term confidence now that any kind of major deal with Microsoft seems like a remote possibility. But the question shareholders have to ask is, as valuable as Icahn is on matters of corporate governance, does he really have the expertise that will make him a valuable contributor to the internet company's search for a CEO?

Have you ever noticed that the people blaming the current economic mess on short sellers tend to be either A.) loud mouths who don't know what they talking about or B.) Failed CEOs turned corporate blame shifters looking for something -- anything -- to divert attention from their own miscues: people like Patrick Byrne and Dick Fuld.

In a post on his blog, Carl Icahn came up with an argument in support of short selling that I hadn't heard before:

In simplest terms, choosing not to buy a stock because you don't like the company is like refusing to be friends with a drunk. But shorting a stock is like sending a drunk into rehab. Many of these companies, drunk with money and neglectful of risk, should have been sent to rehab a long time ago.

It's possible that aggressive short-selling accompanied by a public campaign of red flags might have pushed companies like Lehman Bros. and Bear Stearns to take a look at their risk management policies before it was too late: Certainly Lehman might have avoided its fate if it had listened to David Einhorn's warnings about leverage instead of dismissing him as irrelevant and buying back huge amounts of stock.

For some reason this morning several high profile stories I have been ranting about in recent months have floated to the top of the headline heap again.

I just read that Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) CEO Jerry Yang is ready to return to the bargaining table with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) stating: "To this day, I believe the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo," Yang said Wednesday evening at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! This has to be one of the biggest jokes in the investment world -- unless you are a Yahoo! shareholder. It was only last week I posted Yahoo rejects $30 to buy itself for $12?

Microsoft could now offer a 20% premium to today's stock price and still buy Yahoo for half what it offered last January. What do they say -- "good things come to those who wait". This is certainly a screaming example.

I would love to be in the conference room or on the call when Microsoft offers up a few crumbs to bail them out of a sticky situation. I was against MSFT doing the deal for a bloated price before, but it might make sense now. It could buy the company, and with Wall Street titan and M&A guy Carl Icahn on board, slice and dice this thing so that it cost them next to nothing to get the search advertising part of the company they coveted.

Yang looks like a child playing with grown-ups and his biography is taking one hit after another. Good thing he does not need food money and will never have to work again no matter what happens. By contrast, if Yahoo! took the $44 billion it would have been the deal of the year and Yang would look brilliant again. If I was a shareholder I would be really, really steamed!

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money. Disclosure: I do not own shares of MSFT or YHOO.

Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn has dumped 8.5 million shares -- two thirds of his total stake -- in struggling auto supplier Lear (NYSE: LEA). Icahn Partners' senior managing director Vincent Intrieri resigned from the board, and explained that the sale was done to allow the firm to realize a tax loss. He also claims to be confident in the company's ability to remain viable in spite of the troubles facing the industry.

Yeah, okay. Icahn and Intrieri are probably just saying that to avoid leaving the company with a slap to the face (or a kick in the groin, as the case may be), given that the company's precarious capital position makes it extremely dependent on market confidence.

Here's why I don't buy it: Icahn still has a significant stake in the company -- a little less than 5% compared to 16% prior to the sale -- so, if he really believed in the company's prospects, why would he give up the board seat?

Icahn's taking a huge hit on Lear, but he should thank the company's other shareholders for preventing something that could have been a lot worse. Last year they rejected his offer to take the company private for $2.9 billion. The market cap now sits below $160 million.

We all expected Disney's (NYSE: DIS) High School Musical 3: Senior Year to be the number-one picture at domestic theaters over the weekend, but I have to admit, I thought it might do a little better than the $42 million it's grossed so far (according to estimates at Boxofficemojo). That's still a very decent figure for a movie that began its life on the small screen. And one has to wonder if Disney now believes that a fourth Musical movie might actually be ready to compete in the summer box-office season. If the budget were low enough to justify the risk, I might be for it.

We also had a good idea of what would come in second. Lions Gate Entertainment's (NYSE: LGF) Halloween tradition, a Saw sequel, took up that respectable position. Saw V grossed approximately $30 million. Lions Gate was quick to issue a press release over the weekend pointing out the film's success as well as the financial impact of the Saw franchise as a whole. The numbers are compelling (worldwide theatrical and home-video revenues of the entire series have passed $1 billion) for the low-budget properties.

But, as I noted in an earlier post, the opening-weekend grosses for the Saw flicks have plateaued. Even though we are told by Lions Gate that the Saw franchise has taken in over $1 billion in revenues, exactly what is the profit margin on those revenues? And what is the assumed growth rate of the franchise over time versus the assumed growth rate of the budgets/marketing expenditures? If you look at the following chart, you'll note that cumulative domestic grosses for Saw II through Saw IV have been in decline. Total worldwide grosses for Saw IV declined compared to Saw III.

When most investors are down on a stock they own, they get depressed and sell.

Not so for Carl Icahn. Since he first bought shares of Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. (NYSE: LGF) back in mid-2006, the stock has fallen from around $10 per share to the current price of just over $7. Now Icahn has doubled his stake in the film house to 9.2%. Lions Gate is best-known for hit movies including "Crash" and "Saw", along with TV shows such as "Weeds" and "Mad Men." Icahn may see tremendous value in the company's library of films.

Vice Chairman Michael Burns told (subscription required) The Wall Street Journal that "Mr. Icahn and Lions Gate seem to share a similar vision of the growing value of content as platforms increase delivery around the world."

It'll be interesting to see if Icahn gets active in this company. He has said that he views the company as underleveraged, but current market conditions may make it tough for the company to pursue some of Icahn's favorite value-creation strategies: borrowing money to buy back stock and/or pursuing a sale or merger.

You think you got problems just because your 401(k) has been reduced to a coupon for 50 cents off a box of Tic-Tacs? Some people out there are really suffering. With shares of Icahn Enterprises (NYSE: IEP) down about 75% this year, Carl Icahn is selling his 177-foot yacht, Starfire, for $37.5 million.

Icahn has made a fortune on ImClone, but has had a long string of losses of late: WCI Communities, Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI) and Motorola (NYSE: MOT), among others.

According to the Post, "The ship, which requires a staff of 12 to run, comes with a helicopter pad, jacuzzi, gym, personal chef, and high-speed wireless Internet access so Icahn can keep up with his deals while still living the good life. The floating palace probably costs between $2.5 million and $3.0 million a year to operate."

The broker handling the sale of the yacht told The New York Post that Icahn is selling because he's hoping to buy a bigger yacht, it's hard to know whether to believe that: if Carl Icahn's broker told the media that he was having financial issues, he probably wouldn't be Icahn's broker for long. This would seem like a strange time to upgrade given that Icahn's net worth has suffered, and he seems to be spending most his time on the warpath for corporate governance reform.

With financial institutions imploding in a wave of writedowns -- and executives who delivered mind-bogglingly bad performance walking away from the wreckage with millions -- Carl Icahn is seizing on the current environment to push his agenda on corporate governance reform.

Icahn announced today that he is forming United Shareholders, a lobbying group, to push for legislative reform that would outlaw shareholder-unfriendly corporate bylaws like poison pills and staggered boards.

Lobbyists get a lot of bad press, but this sounds like one effort that will actually be promoting the interests of ordinary investors. In recent months, we've seen the dangers of bad governance and poorly-aligned pay packages that induce executives to take excessive risks.

It seems that Icahn, who has spent most of his life building one of the largest fortunes in the world, is now looking out for his legacy. If Icahn's lobbying and blogging efforts have any effect on the way companies are run, it will be a good one.

ImClone Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: IMCL) had good results today, with shares closing up 6.7% at $67.94. The biotechnology company rejected Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY)'s offer to buy the remaining 83% of the company at $60 a share, saying it is considering a buyout offer worth $70 per share from an unidentified large pharmaceutical company. It seems that chairman Icahn has been busy.

To be sure, I was one of the skeptics when the billionaire investor last rejected BMY's offer, as was my colleague Doug McIntyre. But if this new offer is for real, then I must admit I underestimated him. Apparently, he "has been in talks with the chief executive of the pharmaceutical company that made the new offer, which would be worth about $6.1 billion." ImClone said it has not decided if the offer is adequate -- talk about playing hard ball all the way.

Bristol-Myers is ImClone's partner in selling its only product, the colon and head-and-neck cancer drug Erbitux. Analysts believe this would force BMY to offer $70 as well. A partnership between BMY and ImClone makes sense strategically. But I guess it all depends on who is the other pharmaceutical company BMY is competing with. Many pharma companies are losing sales to generic companies as their drugs go off patent, and without having much in the pipeline, but enough cash on their hands, any of them could be an interested buyer.

Some specific names mentioned by analysts include Sanofi-Aventis (NYSE: SNY), GlaxoSmithKline PLC (NYSE: GSK) and possibly AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE: AZN). Germany's Merck KGaA, which already sells Erbitux in some countries outside North America, is another likely candidate, as is Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE), which has been trying to expand its portfolio of oncology drugs.

It's interesting that negotiations with the other company have been kept so tight, except for the price of course. BMY wins either way -- even if it can't get ImClone -- as it still holds 17% of BMY shares. Icahn, of course, would be a big winner too. Other options ImClone has been entertaining was spinning off the Erbitux division into a separate firm. The parent company would focus on developing drugs in its pipeline.