U.S. stocks jumped on Monday as more merger and acquisition activity in the last days of the third quarter encouraged investors following three sessions of losses.

Xerox Corp will buy Affiliated Computer Services Inc for $6.4 billion in a cash-and-stock deal that expands the copier company into technology outsourcing and data management.

Xerox shares fell 13.4 percent to $7.77 while ACS shot up 16.7 percent to $55.06.

Abbott Laboratories said it would buy the drugs unit of Solvay in a $6.6 billion deal, giving Abbott full control of its Belgian development partner’s cholesterol treatments and exposure to emerging markets.

Abbott stock rose 3.7 percent to $49.11.

“Deal announcements are helping the market off to a good start, especially as we had a bit of selling off last week,” said Peter Jankovskis, co-chief investment officer at OakBrook Investments LLC in Lisle, Illinois.

“People were waiting for a time to get in, and now, they have it.”

With Monday’s gains, the Dow Jones

In this first edition of a new WealthTrack series on great investors, Consuelo Mack sat down with “Bond King” Bill Gross, co-chief investment officer of bond giant Pimco, and discussed how he was reconciling his big-picture, secular views of lower investment returns with his higher-return-oriented investment goals. Amongst others, he told her why he was backing away from his investment strategy of making the government his investment partner - a key theme of Pimco’s over the past year - and what he was focusing on instead. Gross also shared what he is doing with his own money.

Gross’ flagship Total Return Fund was up 4% plus last year, nine full percentage points better than its peers. It is up more than 6% for the year to date, again outstripping the competition. Not too shabby!

Do not miss any of this great interview.

The US Labor Department yesterday reported the labor market had performed considerably worse in June than had been expected. Nonfarm payrolls (jobs) fell by 467,000, following a loss of 322,000 in May, whereas the unemployment rate edged higher to 9.5% from 9.4% in May.

The disappointing jobs report highlighted the severity of the downturn and suggested a bottom for employment is not near. As hopes of an economic recovery during the second half of the year dimmed, the stock market indices declined sharply for a third consecutive weekly loss.

Putting the job losses in historical perspective, Chart of the Day produced a graph comparing job losses during the current economic recession (solid red line) to those of the last recession (dotted gold line) and the average recession from 1954-2006 (dotted blue line). Strikingly, the chart illustrates that the current job market has suffered losses that are nearly